We picked up the action on the flop as the dealer rolled out . A player in middle position checked, and Gavin Smith bet 1,800 into a pot of slightly more than that. His opponent called, and the drew another check-call from him. It was 3,800 on the turn, and he checked again on the river. Smith figured all was safe, and he slid out one final bet of 8,600. Oops. His opponent check-raised all in over the top, and Smith was put to the decision for his full stack of 39,600. Smith spent some time in the tank, and he eventually made the call for his tournament life with .
It was good. The other player's cards hit the muck, and Smith collected the double to move up to about 95,000.
Day 1 of the $2,500 No Limit Hold’em is in the books and Marvin Rettenmaier is your chipleader with 174,100. The day began with 1,734 players and the field has been whittled down to 296 runners. Joining Rettenmaier at the top of the leaderboard are Dan O’Brien, Jack Ellwood and Brian Phelps.
Also moving on to Day 2 are notables Dwyte Pilgrim, Martins Adeniya, Gavin Smith, Randy Dorfman, Eric Baldwin, Matt Marafioti, Lars Bonding, Leo Wolpert, J.C. Tran, Tim Phan, Nam Le, Randal Flowers and Terrence Chan.
One of the most interesting hands of the day occurred when Tommy Vedes shoved on the button, not expecting a call, with only one card. After the call was made Vedes asked the dealer for another card. The floorman was summoned and the ruling was that since Vedes was on the button the top card obviously belonged to him.
Vedes only held the and the dealer peeled off the top card and it was the . He was up against and won the hand after pairing his queen.
Plenty of notables were sent to the rail including: Andy Frankenberger, Dan Fleyshman, Nenad Medic, Jordan Young, Liv Boeree, Jason DeWitt, Nick Binger, Jonathan Duhamel, Isaac Haxton, Sorel Mizzi and Matt Stout.
Tom Dwan was in the tournament today, albeit for just one hand. Dwan played the first hand after the dinner break after his stack had been blinded off down to just over 4,000. He shoved on the button with , got called by a player with and the board gave his opponent two pair. Dwan literally never took his seat, he played his one hand in what Eric Baldwin called a “runner’s stance.”
Before the dealer could award the pot to his opponent Dwan bolted over the Amazon Room for his PLO event. Today was a triple dip for Dwan; he was one of the top chip counts in the $5,000 PLO event and had a stack in the $10,000 HORSE Championship as well.
Sarah Grant scooped Tom Marchese for a quick chat.
Day 2 will begin at 2:30 p.m. PST in the Amazon Room in the Purple section. Be sure to follow all the WSOP live at Pokernews.com.