Event #13, $5,000 Pot Limit Hold 'Em drew 398 of the very best poker players in the world — 56 of the 398 have already earned one or more WSOP bracelets. Another bracelet was the final goal here, along with a $487,287 first-place payday. The players were slow, though, in arriving at their seats; early on, Australian pro Mark Vos, with only one competitor at his table, raised the blinds without checking his cards to capture a pot. Soon David Williams, Daniel Negreanu, Perry Friedman and others joined that table.
The player caliber was high at all tables. One held Michael Mizrachi, Men 'The Master' Nguyen and Erick Lindgren. Another held Joe Sebok, Vanessa Rousso, Antonio Esfandiari, Nam Le, Isaac Haxton, Ryan Daut and Scott Fischman. A third offered Roland de Wolfe, David Grey, Chris Ferguson, Todd Brunson and Howard Lederer. Weak tables were not to be seen. Sorel 'Imper1um' Mizzi got off to a good start in the early going, moving his starting chip stack from 10K to 33K but fell later in the day's play. Mike Matusow, Alex Jacob, defending World Champion Jamie Gold, and European pro Katja Thater also hit the rail in early play.
Two players who already have made appearances at the ESPN Final Table in this year's World Series made significant moves on Day One. Greg 'FBT' Mueller, who was the runner-up in the $5,000 Mixed Game Event, was in the top ten all day and was responsible for eliminating Doyle Brunson and Matthew Hilger and crippling Joe Sebok. By the end of action on Friday, he was well ahead of the field with over 200K in chips. The other was Germany's Jan Von Halle, the ninth-place finisher in the $1,000 No Limit rebuy event. Von Halle took out Michael Gracz in a pivotal hand when both had big stacks. Veteran Dan Alspach moved into second place, with Gavin Griffin in third.
Here's the top ten in chips at the end of Day One play:
PLAYERS — CHIPS
Greg 'FBT' Mueller 228,000
Dan Alspach 196,000
Gavin Griffin 152,500
Shaun Buchanan 136,500
Scott Fischman 135,500
Mike Hauptman 125,500
Travis Rice 122,500
Lex Veldhuis 116,500
Alan Jaffray 116,000
Jan Von Halle 110,500
Other notables still alive here include Chris Ferguson, Jason Lester, Eric 'Rizen' Lynch, Jeff Lisandro, Cliff Josephy, Sebok, Steve Billirakis, Michael Binger, Humberto Brenes, Kathy Liebert, Farzad Bonyadi, Kirill Gerasimov and Allen Cunningham. Join PokerNews.com's 'Live Reporting' of Event #13, $5,000 Pot Limit Hold 'Em at 2pm PDT Saturday.
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