Matthew Ashton Leads The First Mixed Event of the Summer!
Well it was an exciting day for many of the most well known poker players in the world, as it marked the start of the Mixed Game tournaments here at the 2013 World Series of Poker. We are talking about Event 5, the $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8-or-better, which just completed Day 1 after eight levels of play. The player at the top of the mountain with 178 left is Matthew Ashton, who bagged up 57,800 chips. By our counts, the only other player who cracked the 50k barrier was bracelet winner Allyn Shulman, who bagged up 51,500.
Play kicked off at 5 PM local time, and it wasn’t until we got near the first break that we had our first elimination. From there, we lost a few notables, including David Bach, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Selbst, Scotty Nguyen, and Phil Ivey. We also lost defending champion Oleskii Kovalchuk, who busted in one of the last hands of the night.
Despite losing these players, we have a laundry list of notables who will be moving onto day 2. This list includes Eli Elezra (38,700), Mike Matusow (29,200), Cyndy Violette (21,200), Todd Brunson (20,900), Robert Mizrachi (20,700), and Justin “Boosted J” Smith (18,900), amongst countless other notables.
The players have bagged and tagged for the night, and are off to get some much needed rest. They will return at 2 PM tomorrow to continue play. As always, the goal is to get down to a final table, but if that doesn’t happen, we will stop after ten levels of play, and come back the next day for the third and final day. Pokernews.com will of course have all the coverage of this event, and with all of the notables who are still left, it should make for an exciting, action packed day. Thanks for tuning in, and goodnight from the Rio!