Tables are set up throughout the spacious Pavilion Room, and there are still a lot of empty seats, so we're expecting players to keep arriving throughout these first couple of levels.
Some of those here for the first hands of Level 1 include Nam Le, Pat Pezzin, Raymond Rahme, Christina Lindley, J.C. Tran, John Monnette, and Daryll Fish. Barry Shulman and Theo Tran are here, too, sitting next to each other, in fact.
We've also spotted a couple of 2010 WSOP bracelet winners so far among today's field -- Men Nguyen, winner of Event #10, the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship, and Valdemar Kwaysser, who took down Event #38, the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em Championship.
Tournament Director Jack Effel has delivered all of the usual announcements and has instructed dealers to start dealing the first hands of Day 1b.
As Effel noted, players will be playing until we reach about the 35-minute mark of Level 9 today -- as was done yesterday for Day 1a -- at which point they'll stop and those surviving will return for tomorrow's Day 2.
Welcome to Day 1b of Event #54, the last of six open-field $1,000 no-limit hold'em events at this year's WSOP.
Yesterday more than 2,300 players showed up to take their shot at this one, with only 331 surviving to tomorrow's Day 2. Play was stopped last night in the middle of Level 9 so as to prevent the tourney from reaching the money prior to the field combining on Day 2, and that is what will happen again today for those registering to play Day 1b.
Some of the prize pools for these $1K events have been quite large. For the most part, the winners of each have taken home around half a million dollars to go with their shiny gold bracelets. The largest field and prize pool of these $1K events was for the first one -- Event #3 -- which saw 4,345 players enter and Aadam Daya win $625,872 for coming out on top.
Registration for Event #54 will remain open until the start of Level 3, so we'll keep an eye on that entrant total and see if this one challenges Event #3's numbers.
Come back at noon local time when the action begins!
