Derrick Yamada Leads Day 1a
That wraps it up for Day 1a here at the Bicycle Casino! We had 422 players enter for this flight, and at the end of 12 levels, only 130 remain. The lucky player who bagged the most chips was Derrick Yamada, who will bring 211,300 into tomorrow. Yamada finished runner-up in Lake Tahoe earlier this season, and he is primed to make another deep run here! He is followed by Toan Nguyen and 203,300. Once Day 1b wraps up, we will find out where they stand on the overall leaderboard.
We had plenty of familiar faces join us here today. Most of them fell by the waste side, including Matt Affleck, Allan Le, David Singontiko, Chad Batista, Kathy Lievbert, and Allen Cunningham. We also lost Ray Henson, who is fresh off his win in the $1,000 prelim event here just yesterday. All of those players had the option to come back for Day 1b, and several of them took that option.
Despite those players being gone, we still have a ton of people we look forward to seeing tomorrow. This list includes Joe Tehan (148,300), AJ Jejelowo (112,000), Nam Le (81,900), and Christina Lindley (41,200). We also have a trio of players who made the last final table in the Circuit, at Harrah’s Rincon. These names are Erik Roussakis (127,500), Soi Nguyen (60,400), and David Randall (20,500).
The remaining 130 players have bagged and tagged their chips, and are off to get some much needed rest. They will combine with the survivors from tonight’s Day 1b, and those players will meet tomorrow to play Day 2. In addition, anyone who didn’t use two bullets today can come back tomorrow and reenter before we start play. Now we will switch all of our focus to Day 1b.