A total of 79 players made it through eight one-hour levels today, and will restart at 2:00 PM tomorrow with the aim of making history by making a World Series of Poker final table.
From what we could see at the frantic end of play bagging up period, Shawn Buchanon leads the way with 61,800 chips. John Monnette (43,000), Layne Flack (34,300), and Josh Arieh (33,100) all come back with healthy stacks and will be happy with their progress. Jean-Robert Bellande was down to around 2,000 chips in the last level but managed to spin that up to 25,200 at play's end.
Bill Chen (13,200), Richard Ashby (12,000), and Marvin Rettenmaier (2,000) all had bad last levels and were clearly frustrated with their late progress, but at least they're still in.
The same cannot be said for Doyle and Todd Brunson, Shaun Deeb, Vannesa Selbst, David "Viffer" Peat, Daniel Negreanu and Andy Bloch who were amongst many marquee players who failed to advance to day two.
Join us back here tomorrow when we'll try out best to make 79 players look like 6.
Justin Smith raised from mid position and the big blind called. The big blind drew two to Smith's one and check-called a bet. Smith stood pat from there and bet both times. The big blind drew one and check-called the second bet, before he drew one more and folded to the third bet.
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier called a small blind raise whilst sat in the big blind, and drew three to the small blind's two. The small blind bet 200 and ElkY called and then both drew two cards. ElkY called a 400 bet and drew one more as the small blind stood pat. ElkY Called the final 400 bet and mucked when shown .
Daniel Negreanu has busted. He walked past our desk and said, "I wasn't there today!"
We are around about one third of the way through the 2012 World Series of Poker already. Today's 5:00pm start-time event is the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.
This is one of the more niche events and last year it attracted 309 entrants. Lenny Martin overcame Justin Bonomo heads-up to claim the $189,818 top prize. We're expecting a similar number this year and as it's a limit event we expect some of the players to be "double-dipping" with the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em event that started earlier in the day. Then of course there's those like Phil Hellmuth and Phil Ivey who are at the final table of the $2,500 Seven Card Razz and $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em events respectively.
The dealers are being readied and reminded of the rules of this game in preparation. Remember dealers, an ace always plays high in this game!
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