Halfway Home; Day 1a Wraps
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That's it for Day 1a of the World Series of Poker Circuit Palm Beach Main Event. A total of 477 players turned up with the $1,600 buy-in burning a hole in their pockets, and that number represents a small increase over last year's turnout.
Despite the big events running in other parts of the world right now, there was a strong group of notables and near-notables who turned up to the Kennel Club to play some poker. Among them were South Florida's most recent bracelet winner, Tristan Wade, and other local standouts including Harrison Gimbel, John Riordan, Mike Beasley, "Tampa Bay" Ray del Cueto, and 2010 November Niner John Dolan.
There was no November Nine when Jerry Yang won the WSOP Main Event, and he turned up to play here for the second year in a row. Chris Bell won a Regional Championship ring last season, and he played today alongside other Circuit studs like Huy Nguyen, Kyle Cartwright, Chris Tryba, Matt Chang, and Kyle Bowker. Other notables that we're having trouble categorizing included Bernard Lee, Danny Suied, Jeff Papola, Chad Brown, Drazen Ilich, and Captain Tom Franklin.
Gimbel and Riordan did particularly good work today, bagging up 62,800 and 57,000 respectively. Other notables who'll get to take the night off include Kurt Jewell and Stuart Patterson. They're all in the mix, but the chip lead appears to belong to Jacob Viccellio with 137,500. The survivors will be back at noon tomorrow.
Those who haven't survived to the bag-and-tag will still have one more shot at this Main Event. The Day 1b session is scheduled for 7:00pm, and we'll be back after dinner to play another nine levels.
Until then...