[user25067]
Chris Moneymaker
Of the 201 players that ponied up the forty dime buy-in, 89 will move on to Day 2. Currently, Bruno Fitoussi leads the field with 812,500 in chips while 2003 Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker is right behind him with 805,000. Also sporting healthy stacks are Michael DeMichele, Lex "RaSZi" Veldhuis, Emil "whitelime" Patel, Brian Townsend and Justin Bonomo.
In a field of greats, the greats must fall and we saw just that with the departures of bracelet winners Howard Lederer, Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, Jennifer Harman, Kathy Liebert, Johnny Chan, Barry Greenstein, and Chris Ferguson. Also making a Day 1 exit were the top three finishers in the 2008 Main Event (Peter Eastgate, Ivan Demidov, and Dennis Phillips), Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Isaac Baron, Jonathan Little, David Benyamine, Eric Liu, Aaron Been, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Erick Lindgren and Gavin Griffin.
Join us again tomorrow at 2 p.m. PDT for continuing coverage of this event. Until then, good night and good luck from Las Vegas!
[user111541]
Steve Billirakis raises to 10,500 and Scotty Nguyen moves all in for 72,000. Billirakis makes the call and shows while Nguyen shows pocket jacks.
The board comes giving Billirakis a flush and eliminating Scotty Nguyen late in Day One.
Shamus
This last round of hands is working out quite well for Josh Arieh.
On a flop of , Andrew Lichtenberger led out for 38,000, Arieh pushed all in, and Lichtenberger instacalled. Lichtenberger showed for trip jacks, but was outkicked by Arieh's . The turn was the and the river the , and after toiling as the short stack much of the night,
Arieh has now chipped up to 339,000.
Shamus
As play winds down, Josh Arieh just doubled through Kyle Wilson.
After a flop of , Arieh bet 20,000, and Wilson raised enough to put Arieh all in. Arieh called, showing for ace-high. Wilson showed for an open-ended straight draw. The turn was the and the river the , and Arieh moved back up to 175,000. Wilson slips a bit to 520,000.
[user111541]
Alec "Traheho" Torelli
Scotty Nguyen opens the pot from early position for an 11,000 chip raise. Alec Torelli reraises from the small blind to 130,000 - a bet which has both Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier in the big blind and Scotty covered.
Grospellier makes the call and Scotty gets out of the way.
ElkY -
Torelli -
The board comes giving Torelli a set and the pot. He eliminates ElkY and climbs to 297,000.
Shamus
Kyle "krisqueen" Wilson raised to 11,000 from middle position and got three callers: Peter Gould (cutoff), Dani Stern (button), and John Duthie (big blind). The flop came . Duthie checked, Wilson bet 30,000, Gould called, and Stern and Duthie folded.
The turn was the . Wilson bet 75,000, and after some deliberation Gould pushed all in for 172,700. Wilson called, turning over for two pair. Gould showed for a pair of aces. The river was the , and Gould was eliminated.
[user25067]
There's a new policy in place at the end of the day here at the WSOP. With ten minutes remaining in the final level, the tournament clock will be stopped and one card will be drawn from a deck to determine the number of hands each table will play before the surviving players bag and tag their chips. This policy, designed to deter stalling, is already in place on other poker tours including the EPT and the LAPT.
Neil "Bad Beat" Channing had the card-drawing honors and pulled a nine from the deck. Ergo, nine more hands will be dealt at each table before we wrap up for the night.
[user25067]
No shippage for Vivek
Vivek Rajkumar was all in preflop against Marco Johnson, his needing some help on the board against Johnson's . Alas, there was no ace for Vivek as the board ran out sending the WPT champion to the rail.