World Series of Poker Circuit Caesars Palace Day 1: Slaubaugh Slaughtering the Competition

April 29 2011, Donnie Peters

Poker is alive and well in Las Vegas, Nevada, as proven on Thursday with the start of the World Series of Poker Circuit Caesars Palace $1,600 Main Event. A total of 496 players came out to action, creating a prize pool of nearly $715,000. With Day 1 in the books, 84 players remain and it’s Cody Slaubaugh topping the pack with 401,900 in chips.

Day 1 was a long day on the felt as the players played for more than 12 hours and through the first 16 levels on the structure sheet. That’s quite a day of poker and it included a solid combination of both notable professionals and amateur players.

Some of the notables who turned up for the event included 2010 WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela, 2007 WSOP Main Event champion Jerry Yang and 2006 WSOP Main Event champion Jamie Gold. Those three were joined by Allen Cunningham, James Van Alstyne, Dennis Phillips, Bryan Micon, Eric Froehlich and Dutch Boyd. Unfortunately, all of those players failed to make it out of Day 1 and won’t be collecting this WSOP Circuit title.

Kassela had one of the shortest life spans in the entire tournament, lasting only a few levels before all of his chips vanished. He found all of them in the middle on the flop holding for top and bottom pair. His opponent held . The turn blanked, but a six counterfeited Kassela’s two pair on the river to cost him the pot and his tournament.

Phillips was another elimination that came at the hands of some bad luck. He got all of his money in on the king-high board after flopping top set. His opponent turned a gutshot straight and that’s when the money went in. The river failed to pair the board and Phillips was out the door as well early on Day 1.

Not everything was bad news on Day 1 through, as plenty of players will be taking healthy stacks into Day 2. Chad Brown, Erica Schoenberg, Amanda Baker, Adam Hui, Mary Jones, Andrew Watson and Alex Santiago all did very well on Thursday and will be returning on Friday to continue the quest towards the $153,599 first-place prize.

Day 2 kicks off on Friday at 1200 PDT (1900 GMT) and PokerNews’ top-notch, world-leading Live Reporting Team will be bringing you all of the updates straight from the floor. Be sure to follow along for all of the action as the tournament winds down to the final table on Friday.

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