Closing Time
Leo Boxell and Tom Grigg seemed to be engaged in a day-long game of King of the Hill, overtaking each other atop the leaderboard through seven long levels of poker. While the numbers are not yet official, it appears as though Boxell will finish the day with the most chips, despite a late surge from Grigg, who knocked out 'Sheldon' in the closing minutes of the day to claim a massive pot and move to 145,000 in chips. Our last count of Boxell had him at 147,700 in chips.
Jay 'SEABEAST' Kinkade, Minh Nguyen and Brian Wilson were a few of the more notable casualties of the day, while David Steicke, Emanuel 'Curly' Seal, Aaron Benton, Wooka Kim, Michael 'TheBigSiCkO' Guzzardi, Amanda De Cesare, Simon Watt and defending Champ Martin Rowe all made it to the bag and tag portion of the day and will return to the Star City poker room when Day 2 play commences Friday afternoon.
Tomorrow's third and final Day 1 flight looks to be a big'un as WSOP Main Event Champs Peter Eastgate and Joe Hachem are expected to grace the felt along with fellow Team PokerStars Pros Celina Lin, Grant Levy, Emad Tahtouh, Tony Hachem, Bryan Huang and Raymond Wu.
Play will recommence at 12:30 p.m. local time (GMT+11) and as always, the PokerNews live reporting team will be on hand delivering all of the updates as they happen, direct from the tournament floor.
Until then, from the Star City poker room in Sydney, Australia, good night and good luck!