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.
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!