Brown Takes Overwhelming Chip Lead Into Day 2
The World Series of Poker Circuit Harrah's Tunica Main Event kicked off on Saturday with two starting flights attracting 625 players, though players are allowed to register right up to the start of Day 2. The turnout exceeded last year’s total of 480 by a large margin, though re-entry was not an option in 2010/2011. After each nine-level flight had concluded, Dantonio Brown emerged as the clear chip leader, bagging an astounding 277,100 in chips.
The first starting flight, aptly called Day 1a, drew 421 players including last year's champ and National Championship winner, Sam Barnhart, and Kyle Cartwright, who made a big splash at this stop last year by winning two rings and capturing the “Casino Championship." Cartwright managed to survive the opening flight, albeit with a mediocre 24,000, while Barnhart was eliminated and exercised his option to re-enter of Day 1b.
Other players who were eliminated in the first flight and re-entered included Eric Crain, John Dolan, Aaron Massey, Earl Barron, and Traci Brown, just to name a few. The decision proved fruitful for all of the abovementioned players, including Barnhart, as all but Crain made it to Day 2.
They joined a laundry-list of notables who needed only one bullet to advance including Roland Israel (85,000), Houston White (79,800), Beverly Cheney (46,800), Kurt Jewell (39,500), “Captain” Tom Franklin (37,000), Doug “Rico” Carli (35,500), Al Theriac (31,300) and Huy Nguyen (30,900).
The chip leader got off to a idyllic start and grew his chip stack exponentially. In just a few levels he was all the way up to 100,000, and then came a recent hand on a flop of 
when Brown and the button got all in, creating a monster pot of around 90,000.
Showdown
| Brown |   |
| Button |   |
Brown had the granddaddy of all hands, pocket rockets, but the button had flush outs. Unfortunately for the latter, Brown was running hot and he dodged both the turn and river, which came the 
and 
respectively. The button made a hasty exit while Brown chipped up to 170K! From there he chipped up and rode the chip lead all the way to the end of Day 1.
While approximately 400 players advanced to Day 2, not everyone was so lucky. Mark “Pegasus” Smith, Shaun Johnston, Bob Talbot, and La Sengphet all fired one bullet and failed to advance.
Brown may be the overwhelming chip leader, but there are plenty of others sitting on decent stacks including Ray Weaver (138,500), Bo Chevallier (96,500), David Walker (95,600), and Chris Bigler (70,900).
Day 2 will kick off at 12:00 p.m. CST on Sunday, so be sure to follow all the action live on Pokernews.com!