With only 298 players remaining of our initial 1,987 it is time to pack it in and call it a night. It took just eight and a half levels of play for us to lose 85% of our field today. That means tomorrow's field, however large it may be, will play to about the same time before both days merge on Monday.
Even with a large number of big tournament going on, today's event managed to draw an impressive list of names. Sorel Mizzi, Jason Mercier, Hevad Khan, Dennis Phillips, Theo Tran, Shaun Deeb, Eric Baldwin, Tom Dwan, David "Bakes" Baker, David Pham, Paul Wasicka, Humberto Brenes, Chris Ferguson and more all took a shot at the bracelet, but failed to make it out of Day 1 alive.
Despite the large number of players who didn't make it, we'll still have some well-known players joining us for Day 2. Scott Montgomery looks to be our chipleader with 75,700 but Neil Channing (64,500), David Sands (52,000), Liv Boeree (24,275) and Marco Traniello (20,500) will all be back to try to make a final table.
A player in the cutoff at David Sands' table raised all in for 10,700 and David Sands tanked for a moment in the small blind and asked for an exact count before announcing he was all in. The big blind checked his cards and chips a few times, but eventually folded.
Sands:
Cutoff:
The flop kept Sands ahead when it came and he stayed ahead with the on the turn and the on the river.
It looks like Sands now has about 52,000 chips to his name.
Michael Gracz finished the last level on a high note. He was in the big blind and had called a raise to 850 from the player in the cutoff. Gracz checked when the flop came , but the cutoff bet 1,100. At that point Gracz three-bet to 2,600 and the cutoff four-bet to 8,000. Not to be outdone, Gracz shoved for around 26,000 and the cutoff called.
Expecting a couple of monsters?
Gracz:
Cutoff:
Gracz was ahead, but was a statistical underdog heading into the turn. The turn was the , giving the cutoff even more outs, none of which came when the river fell .
The double up allowed Gracz to climb to 54,000 chips.