Aaron Massey is the big name of the family in the poker world, but he also has a brother named Ralph who is starting to build up a poker resume of his own. Ralph has already notched two five-figure scores, the bigger one being an 8th place finish in the $3,200 Chicago Poker Classic earlier this month. He pocketed $33,860 for his efforts there.
Well the two brothers are sitting at adjacent tables, and seem to be having a ball, making bets with each other when they aren't in hands. It also helps that both Ralph and Aaron have already doubled their starting stacks on the day, with Aaron holding a slight edge at the moment.
It was a tough day for circuit grinder Philip Hui. Hui had a decent start to the day, hanging around his starting stack until he got moved to a table that had a ton of big stacks. Hui couldn't get any traction going there, and he got his last 11,000 preflop holding . He was up against the of his opponent.
There was an ace in the window, as the flop completed . Hui got up and got his stuff ready, and he made his way to the exits when the turn and river brought a pair of ladies, and .
Hui will have the option to re-enter one more time in this event.
We didn't catch the hand that did him in, but we saw Kevin Boudreau casually playing on his ipad at an empty table a few minutes ago, and we saw that his previous seat had been filled, meaning that he is no longer in the tournament. We will be sure to keep an eye out for his re-entry in a later flight.
Since registration will remain open until the day is done, we don't want to post an official entrant count. However, to give you an idea of how many players to expect, the clock is showing 178 entrants in this flight, with 120 players remaining.
Registration is open all day here at the Lodge Casino, so we expect to see players filing in as the day goes by. One of the new faces we saw after the break was Ryan Lenaghan. Lenaghan became famous for his 16th place finish in the 2011 Main Event, where he took home $378,796 for his efforts.
Lenaghan has been grinding the circuit recently, and it's paying dividends for him. Lenaghan made a deep run in the Los Angeles Main Event in January, finihsing 21st, and just five days ago, he won a ring here in Black Hawk in a $365 buy in event.
Yes please! This was the question J.R. Richards asked us while we were counting his mountain of chips. Before the break, we mentioned that Jeff Fielder was our chip leader, but Richards has come out of nowhere to have the entire field crushed at the moment. By our best estimation, Richards is sitting on 123,000!
As we came over to get his name, Richards said "Let's trade places I'll report and you can play you will make more money then me!" Well it certainly seems like Richards is underplaying his ability as he is cruising at the moment.
You can add Raymond Dandrea to our growing list of causalities here today. He will have the option to re-enter either in Day 1b, 1c, or at the start of Day 2. They can only do one of these however.
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. He was up against the 
of his opponent.
. Hui got up and got his stuff ready, and he made his way to the exits when the turn and river brought a pair of ladies, 
and 
.
