Juijen Chang Leads the Way, Michael Mizrachi Right Behind Him
Today saw the start of the last non-flop games at the WSOP, as Day 1 of Event #59 $2,500 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball completed. After eight levels of drawing and standing pat, Juijen Chang leads the way with a massive stack of 66,000. The only player within 20,000 of him is none other then Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, who ended the night with 58,300 despite sitting out the last level of the night.
282 players ponied up the buy in for this event, well above the 228 from last year. Over half of the field was eliminated today, and some of the causalities included Phil Galfond, Greg Raymer, John Juanda, Barry Greenstein, Billy Baxter, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, and Alex Kravchenko.
It wasn't all bad news for the notables, as a slew of them made it through the day. Amongst those still alive are David “ODB” Baker (46,900), Gavin Smith (36,900), Daniel Negreanu (24,400), Mike Leah (23,000), Scott Seiver (18,900) and 2013 WSOP bracelet winners Marco Johnson (40,000), Tom Schneider (32,300), David Chiu (28,500), Daniel Idema (21,500), Vladimir Shchemelev (13,700), and Jesse Martin (12,800).
The 88 surviving players will return tomorrow at 2 p.m. local time to play ten more levels of triple draw poker. The plan is to play ten levels, or until a final table has been reached: whichever comes first. As always, Pokernews.com will be here with all of your up to date action. Thanks for tuning in, and good night from Las Vegas!