Raul Garza Leads the Way in Largest Day 1 Field of Event #9
Day 1f of Event #9: 750K GTD NLH has reached conclusion after nearly ten hours of play. The final flight added an additional 344 entries, which played down to just 41 players (12%) at the end of the night.
The end-of-day chip leader was Raul Garza who bagged a whopping 806,000 chips. Garza picked up a large portion of his chips by using his already large stack to bully other players as the bubble drew near. One player took a stand against him when Lukas Brazdeikis called his all-in shove with 
. Garza had pocket sevens that hand and they held to begin his explosion to the top of the leaderboard. Garza is also our overall chip leader going into tomorrow's final day.
| Rank | Player | Hometown | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Raul Garza | Alton, TX | 806,000 | 100 |
| 2 | Jordan Mandel | Smithville, TX | 660,000 | 82 |
| 3 | Payam Saleh | Leander, TX | 581,000 | 73 |
| 4 | Blake Whittington | Cleveland, TN | 529,000 | 66 |
| 5 | Kristen Bicknell | Las Vegas, NV | 499,000 | 62 |
| 6 | Mason Barrell | Eugene | 481,000 | 60 |
| 7 | Kevin Garosshen | Las Vegas, NV | 472,000 | 59 |
| 8 | Rudy Cadenas | Las Vegas, NV | 381,000 | 48 |
| 9 | Trilok Ghanshyam | Katy, Tx | 357,000 | 45 |
| 10 | McNeil Smith | Austin, TX | 355,000 | 45 |
Not far behind him is Kristen Bicknell, who bagged 499,000 chips herself. She made all the right moves as the day went on to build a healthy stack. Alex Foxen and their dog, Riley were on the rail supporting her all evening. "Riley has brought her some run good this week," Foxen shared. We'll see if Riley shows up tomorrow to continue the run.
Kevin Garosshen was one of two players responsible for getting players through the bubble and on to day two. He flopped a set of tens against bubble person #1, Daniel Jones. Jones couldn't hit his combo draw on the river and was left just shy of a bag. Garosshen will carry 472,000 chips into Day 2.
Conrad Simpson busted bubble person #2, Jeremy Moore. Moore was forced to play when the big blind caused him to put all his remaining chips in the middle. Simpson isolated by shoving his relatively short stack in as well. In the end, Simpson's 
bested the blind hand of Moore, which was 
. Simpson will start Day 2 with 130,000 chips and oozing confidence in his ability to run that up.
42 players were scheduled to bag from this flight as that would have made 12% of the field. However, since both Jeremy Moore and Daniel Jones busted at the same time during hand-for-hand play, they missed out on a bag for Day 2 and any piece of the prize pool. So, then, 41 players have punched their ticket to tomorrow's final day.
The 41 players will move on to Day 2, joining the other 95 players that bagged from the previous five flights.
PokerNews will continue the coverage tomorrow at 2:00 pm when the remaining players will play down to a winner and decide who will take home the largest cut of the over $750,000 prize pool.