Tony Welds Leads Day 1 of Event #44: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em
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The 44th event of the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP) continued it's late trend of ever-increasing fields when 2,949 entries souls took to the felt. That figure eclipsed last years total of 2,890 entrants, an event that saw Kenneth Griffin take home his first ever WSOP bracelet in his first ever live cash.
We will have to wait for another two days to see who our next 'Kenneth Griffin' will be, but in the meantime Tony Welds leads the way. Welds bagged and tagged 131,900 chips and leads the final 297 players as we close the books on Day 1 and look forward to Day 2 in a few hours time.
When the day began - eleven long levels ago - the field was shrinking quicker than little girls called Alice when they drink out of bottles with the motif "DRINK ME" emblazoned on them. A whole raft of talent left the competition. From the ladies section we lost Kathy Liebert, Liv Boeree and Erika Moutinho and from the gentleman's section Barry Shulman Tony Cousineau, Jason Senti and Terrence Chan were shown the door.
The halls of the Rio were echoing with bad beat stories but none funnier than Govert Metaal. He was eliminated very early and told us that if we thought that exit was fast we hadn't seen anything yet. In the previous day Metaal played in the $1,500 and was eliminated so quickly he caught the same taxi home that had brought him to the event because it hadn't even moved up the line!
After the dinner break and it was a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner who topped the charts. Only days ago, Blair Hinkle, had finished 4th in Event #38: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em earning $192,734 and he received a gift just after dinner. After five-betting with 
his opponent tank-called with 
. The board ran out devoid of any aces and Hinkle was the first player to surpass the 60k mark mark.
"It must be the hat," said Ryan Julius referring to the white fisherman's hat seated on top of the Hinkle bonce.
We lost John Racener, Christian de Leon and Mathew Frankland at one end and Jake Schindler popped up with 70,000 at the other. Schindler had been seated next to Patrik Antonius's wife Maya for most of the day and he didn't have a clue who she was. Then during one of their conversations Mrs Antonius told Schindler that her husband was playing in the $50k and then revealed it was Antonius.
"Antonius? He's a huge fish," joked Schindler.
The tail end of the tournament was all about the bubble with the entire last level consumed with hand for hand play with Erik Seidel and Maya Antonius two of the notables to avoid elimination. But the bubble did burst and the play stopped dead. The battle at the top was close right to the bitter end with only 1,000 chips separating Tony Welds and Amnon Filippi when the bags were finally checked.
Day 2 starts at 1:00PM in the Amazon room and PokerNews will bring you all of the action.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
131,900 | 9,900 |
|
130,900 | -36,100 |
|
101,400 | 1,400 |
|
100,900 | 6,900 |
|
98,100 | 18,100 |
|
96,600 | 600 |
|
94,200 | 14,200 |
|
90,200 | 17,200 |
|
77,000 | -3,000 |