One Day Down

As one might expect, it was a star-studded field that turned out today for Event 6, $10,000 Seven-Card Stud. This was a field that was stocked with poker talent. We doubt we could even count all of the bracelets represented by players in the field if we tried.

Eight levels of play didn't take very long here in the back corner of the Brasilia room. What did take very long was finding an elimination. The first player was eliminated just before the dinner break, after four full levels of play. From there it was like a rusty, long unused faucet -- a drip, then another drip, then a few more drips, then a trickle and finally a slow but steady stream of eliminations.

At the end of the day, three players were vying for the chip lead: 2006 $5,000 Seven-Card Stud winner Benjamin Lin; 2008 double final tablist Matthew Glantz ($50,000 H.O.R.S.E; $10,000 Eight-Game Mix); and a man who has made the final table of this event each of the last two years -- David Oppenheim. Each player was very close to 100,000 in chips; it's difficult to determine who will be the overnight chip leader until all of the chip bags are logged by tournament staff.

Tomorrow, the remaining 102 players (minus any last-minute eliminations) will return to play down to a final table of eight. Although that sounds like a daunting task, we expect the pace of play to pick up significantly as the tournament structure finally catches up to the number of chips in play. Action kicks of at 2pm tomorrow afternoon; see you then!

2009 World Series of Poker

2009 World Series of Poker

One Day Down