John Larson Leads as 219 Advance to Day 2
Today the 2013 World Series of Poker continued as 1,014 players packed the Brasilia Room for Day 1 of Event #20 $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split 8-or-Better. That was 47 players more than the year prior—representing a nearly 5% increase in attendance—and meant there was a $1,368,900 prize pool on the line. That will be distributed to the top 117 players, with a healthy $277,274 reserved for the eventual winner. The man best positioned to capture it? That would be John Larson, who emerged as the chip leader of the advancing 219 players with 73,700.
While Larson had the most chips, plenty of other notables bagged up big stacks including Thomas Besnier (66,600), Eric Sclavos (53,600), Brian Hastings (47,900), Robert "Chip Burner" Turner (47,700), Dmitrii Valouev (42,400), James Bord (40,000) and Matthew Kelly (39,700).
Of course not everyone was so lucky. Among those to hit the rail on Day 1 were Maria Ho, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Chad Brown, Cory Zeidman, Matt Glantz, Phil Hellmuth, 2007 champ Alex Kravchenko, 2011 champ Francesco "Cheech" Barbaro, and the defending champ Herbert Tapscott.
While many big names fell, quite a few are still in contention including Max Steinberg (36,300), Carlos Mortensen (31,500), David Chiu (29,000), Daniel Weinman (28,400), Barry Greenstein (27,900), Men "The Master" Nguyen (27,000), Mike "The Mouth" Matusow (23,700), Owais Ahmed (23,000), Mike Sexton (22,900), Tom Schneider (18,600) and Jennifer Harman (17,000), just to name a few.
Day 2 is set to kick off at 1:00 PST on Tuesday. Join us then as we bring you all the updates on the way to the money and onward to the final table. Until then, good night from the Rio.