The empty seats are disappearing as our full crowd begins to fill out the Pavilion. Here's another round of new notables we spotted in our walk through half the room.
Brad Garret is about the funniest guy you'll ever see at the poker table. He's currently seated at the same table as Andy Black and the pair seem to have quite a rapport. Most of the other players can't hold a straight face.
The player on the button opened to 150, and Erik Cajelais three-bet to 650 from the big blind. The button called, and the two men took a flop. Cajelais continued out with a bet of 700. The button flatted, and Cajelais' bet of 1,300 on the turn was also called. On the river, the filled out the board, and Cajelais fired one last bet of 2,000. The button raised now, making it 5,000 straight, and Cajelais only had 2,100 chips left. He decided to wait for a better spot, open-mucking a pocket pair of jacks to hang on to those chips for now.
We just caught the tail end of the pot, walking up as the dealer put the last card down on a board. Amanda Baker was first to act from the blinds, and she shoved all in for 3,400 into a pot of about 7,500. Her opponent called off all but the last 400 of his own chips, and Baker tabled for the flush.
It was good, and she's doubled up to 14,000 here in the early going.
We have another 2011 bracelet winner in the field this afternoon. Well, had. Had another bracelet winner in the field.
Andy Frankenberger just took down the 2,500-player $1,500 no-limit hold'em event the other day, good for close to $600,000. He's found a way to spend $2,500 of that rather quickly here today as we just spotted him walking right back out the doors he came in. Word on the street is he and another opponent both flopped trips, but Frankenberger apparently had the bad end of it.
We're too far away to see the number, and we forgot to look before we walked back here. But whatever table that is in the yellow section, we're going to be watching it.
It's the toughest table in town right now, and it includes Corwin Cole (Seat 1), Dan Kelly (Seat 3), Steve O'Dwyer (Seat 4), Beth Shak (Seat 6), and Joe Cada (Seat 8). Former PokerNews-er Anthony Yeh has just taken his seat in the nine hole. Good luck, Anthony...
After taking a stroll through the field we've seen such notables in the White section of the Pavilion Room. They include Dan Smith, Ludovic Lacay, Shannon Shorr, Tim Finne, Tsubasa Manabe and Jeff Williams.
Joining the field in the Yellow section of the Pavilion Room we've spotted Scott Montgomery, Jason Potter, Jordan Young, Steve O'Dwyer, Beth Shak, Brad Garrett, and Vivek Rajkumar.
Some of the field has started of in the Purple section of the Amazon Room. There are only 15 tables now and will be first in the breaking order. We spotted Lars Bonding, Eric Baldwin, John Hoang and David Pham.
As you'd imagine, the list of notables in our field is a long one. We'll start with a pair of Brazilians (Andre Akkari, Alex Gomes), a trio of ladies (La Sengphet, Beth Shak, Erica Schoenberg), three Dans (Kelly, Smith, O'Brien), a 2011 bracelet winner (Jason Somerville), a funny guy (Brad Garrett), a stoner (Matt Stout), a dragon (David Pham), a poker CEO (Dan Fleyshman), a math whiz (Paul Magriel), the defending champ (Tomer Berda), and the last two Main Event winners (Joe Cada, Jonathan Duhamel).
The registration number is approaching 1,400, and we've got a full house in the Pavilion. Tables are starting to form over in the Amazon Room, and there are already about fifteen of them in play.