The early levels of these multi-day tournaments can be grueling. Players are deep-stacked and unless a major cooler develops, the hands tend to be pretty small. As such, we're often forced to walk the room in the hopes of catching some action.
In our most recent pass we didn't catch any action, but we did notice a commonality among some of the players, that being the fruit plate. The Bicycle Casino serves up some pretty good food and it seems quite a few players have opted to eat healthy (or at least have fruit plates sitting near them). Among them: Bruce Buffer, Tom McEvoy, Masa Kagawa, and Justin "Boosted J" Smith.
Another issue seems to have come up with the process of getting tables started from late registration. The Bike is holding any new tables from dealing until there are eight players seated at the table. The newest table in the room containing Christin Harder, Ty Reiman and Thor Hansen has six players. They still need two more players in order to start dealing and that could take awhile. Even though two-thirds of the table is full, the requirement is eight players so they won't start dealing until two more arrive.
On another table, we've noticed that the couple of Bryn Kenney and Ana Marquez are seated on opposite sides of Justin Smith. These two both registered together a little bit after play started. Hmm...?
Randall Flowers has been having trouble gaining traction here in the early going. Thus far he has lost with both pocket queens and kings, and in a recent hand he didn't fare much better. With around 750 in the pot and a board reading , Flowers bet 525 and received a call from his sole opponent on the button.
The dealer proceeded to burn and turn the , which both players checked, followed by the on the river. Flowers bet out sheepishly bet 200, the button raised to 700, and Flowers tossed in the call. The button showed for a straight and Flowers simply mucked, dropping to around 24,000 in the process.
It seems that if you show up to The Bike and late register for the event, you're most likely going to be seated at the same table with the players who register right around the same time as you. We spotted a group of Dan O'Brien, Mohsin Charania, Hiren Patel, Matt Marafioti, Blair Hinkle and Thayer Rasmussen all registering at the same time. They are all seated at the same table and brought it to the attention of the floor staff that this sort of thing should be avoided.
Another table where the same thing has happened includes late registrants Jonathan Aguiar, Steve O'Dwyer, Amnon Filippi, Taylor von Kriegenbergh and James Mackey.
One more tough table to add to the list. Over at Table 7 we've spotted Maria Ho, Steven Brecher, and Shannon Shorr battling it out.
In a recent, and inconsequential hand, Brecher raised to 250 under the gun and received a call from the player in the cutoff. When the flop fell , Brecher continuation bet 350 and his opponent folded. It wasn't very exciting, but it qualifies as our first-reported hand of the day!
Plenty of players are still trickling into the tournament area, but we've spotted a few tough tables already in the room. Masa Kagawa, George Lind III, Joe Serock and Vladimir Schemelev are all seated together at the same table. On another table, we spotted Adam Levy, Joseph Cheong and Richard Toth all seated together. Across the room, Scott Seiver is joined by Darren Elias and Shawn Buchanan.
Players are still filtering in as Level 1 is well underway. Among those is action on Day 1a are:
Randall Flowers
Greg Debora
Bruce Buffer
Joseph Cheong
Adam Levy
Maria Ho
Yevgeniy Timoshenko
Scott Seiver
Shannon Shorr
Vladimir Schemelev
Joe Serock
Tom McEvoy
Randy Lew
, Flowers bet 525 and received a call from his sole opponent on the button.
, which both players checked, followed by the 
on the river. Flowers bet out sheepishly bet 200, the button raised to 700, and Flowers tossed in the call. The button showed 
for a straight and Flowers simply mucked, dropping to around 24,000 in the process.
, Brecher continuation bet 350 and his opponent folded. It wasn't very exciting, but it qualifies as our first-reported hand of the day!
