Main Event
Day 1 Started
2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit - Horseshoe Hammond
Main Event
Day: 1
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit - Horseshoe Hammond
Buy-in
$1,500
Prize Pool
$1,245,680
Entries
872
Level
36
Blinds
125,000 / 250,000
Ante
50,000
Expecting Huge Numbers in Hammond
Welcome back to Indiana, but this time to Hammond as it's time for another stop on the World Series of Poker Circuit tour!
The numbers for the event are expected to be huge. The first two Circuit events both saw massive increases in field size from last season to this season and the Hammond event will follow suit. One thing about the Hammond event is that it's numbers from last season rivaled that of the first two events on this season's schedule and it was previously a $5,000 buy-in. With the buy-in lowered to $1,500, more players can afford it and will come out to play.
Another reason why the Main Event will increase in size is the Regional Championship that looms right around the corner. Many big name players decided to play the Regional Championship and have come out a few days early to play the Main Event. The $10,000 Regional Championship is something that both Council Bluffs and Southern Indiana did not have on their schedule to draw a larger, more elite crowd.
Lastly, we're in Hammond and history tells us that these fields are ridiculously large for every event every year. The opening event here in Hammond, a $350 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em event, smashed last year's record of 1,412 for largest-ever WSOP Circuit tournament. How big was it? How about 1,611 entrants! All of the other preliminary events have seen very large field sizes as well.
You can expect that we'll be seeing a lot of familiar names on the felt for this one along with plenty of the players who have performed well in the past two Circuit stops this season. Plenty of players have earned themselves some points for the National Championship race and you can check out the leader board to see where everyone stands.
The tournament kicks off today at 12:00 p.m. local time here in Hammond, Indiana and PokerNews will be there from the floor to bring you all the coverage. We'll see you in a bit!
Level: 1
Blinds: 25/50
Ante: 0
Let's Do This!
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The room is filling up fast as our start time has arrived. In standard WSOP fashion, the cards have gone into the air right on time at high noon, and a room full of players scurried to their assigned seats like a big game of musical chairs.
The clock shows 565 players have already been given their seat cards, and the registration line is out the door with another 100-150 players queued up to pay their money.
Let's play some poker, shall we?
Noting Notables
"The Venue", the tournament room is absolutely massive here at Horseshoe Hammond. As we paced our way through the tables, we spotted a pretty good crew of familiar faces.
Mike "GoLeafsGoEh" Leah was one of the first we spotted, sitting near David "ODB" Baker. Those two are in the neighborhood of the WSOP Circuit's all-time leading casher, Tahoe Andrew. We also spotted Bryan Devonshire, Todd Terry, Jeff Banghart, Craig Bergeron, Mohsin Charania, Chad Brown, and Kathy Liebert.
If Twitter is any indication, we've got a ton more notables en route to this event, so expect our list to keep growing until registration closes.
Latecomers
Jason Mercier just arrived to take his seat, followed a few seconds later by his mates Allen Bari and Dan O'Brien. Faraz "The-Toilet 0" Jaka and Matt "Allinat420" have taken a leave from the online world to come late register for this event as well.
Also spotted in the latecomer category are WSOP Player of the Year leader Frank Kassela, Chris Tryba, Darryll Fish, James Carroll, and former Circuit Main Event champion Jean-Paul "Prince" Gaspard.
There are 675 players registered, and the line outside shows no signs of thinning any time soon a registration remains open for a good while longer.
Level: 2
Blinds: 50/75
Ante: 0
Small Fields for the Birds
Don't worry about a shortage of numbers here in Hammond, but the tournament staff may need to worry about a shortage of tables for all the players. At last check, the board read 740 entrants. We wandered outside into the hallway where registration is located and the line is still about 125 people deep and doesn't look to be getting any shorter.
There are talks swirling of hitting 900, far above the original goal of 700 that the tournament staff wished to reach. To us, 900 looks like it will be easily obtainable given the amount of people currently in line. They're still filing in from outside and some small talk of alternates is in the air. Alternates or not, this event is massive!
More Names
They just keep pouring in by the bunches.
Josh Brikis
Bryn Kenney
Joe Elpayaa
Dave Sands
Ty Reiman
Jonathan Aguiar
Keith Crowder
Doug Carli
Jonathan Tamayo
Tom Koral
John Land
Edward Ochana
Let Me Twitter That
Want an idea of how big this event is? Just look at our Twitter Tracker:
Adam "Roothlus" Levy: The line to reg for the tourney is at least 40 minutes long, around 300 ppl deep. Gonna eat some breakfast and hope the line dies down.
Dave Sands: Just got to Hammond. The line to reg is 150 deep min. Never seen anything like it. In line at 12:20, doubt I get regged before 1:30.
Josh Brikis: Over 800 players. Table 35...looks good..let's go