After a record field in the "Millionaire Maker" yesterday, today's $1,000 buy-in event did not disappoint when a respectable 1,837 players started the day. After 11 levels of play, Eric Baldwin appears to have the largest stack in the room and is sitting pretty with 121,000 in chips. Some of the other top stacks in the room include: Adam Geyer (118,200), Annette Obrestad (98,000) and Nick Abourisk (87,000).
Play started at noon today with quite a few notable names including Antonio Esfandiari, Men Nguyen, Matt Glantz, Joe Serock, Brian Rast, David Williams, Tony Dunst and Paul Wasicka to name a few. Wasika (65,400), however, is the only one from this group to survive the day.
The consensus among the players is that the room was friendly which was reiterated by this tweet by Shane Schleger:
Friendly or not, 1,689 players were eliminated leaving 148 to come back for day 2. They will be fighting it out for the $305,952 first-place prize and the coveted WSOP bracelet. Play will resume tomorrow at 1 p.m.
With 3-minutes left in the level Cherish Andrews found herself all in preflop with her up against her opponent's . The board of was not kind to Andrews and she was eliminated.
John LeBlanc shoved all in from under the gun and Daniel Makowsky called from the small blind. When the cards were flipped, LeBlanc had and Makowsky . The board came and LeBlanc's queens were good enough for the double up, only causing a slight dent in Makowsky's stack.
The bubble burst without fan fare as we lost the necessary players before hand for hand was announced. We have 198 players remaining, all guaranteed a minimum of $1,868 with 44-minutes of play left in the evening.