Day 1 of Event #44: $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em attracted 1,561 entries at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and played out at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.
A prize pool of $2,778,580 was generated by 1,561 entrants, of which the remaining 235 players are guaranteed a slice. The min-cash is worth $4,000 but it's the top prize of $410,359 that everybody has their eyes firmly locked on.
Play ended at the last second of Level 16 with Wai Kiat Lee bagging one of the top stacks after he amassed 557,000 chips throughout the day. Lee has won tournaments all around the globe, but a bracelet still eludes the Malaysian player who sits eighth on his country's all-time money list.
End of Day 1 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jianfeng Sun | China | 820,000 | 103 |
| 2 | Jed Friedman | United States | 806,000 | 101 |
| 3 | Narcis Nedelcu | Romania | 777,000 | 97 |
| 4 | Damien Le Goff | United Kingdom | 751,000 | 94 |
| 5 | Philip Wiszowaty | United States | 662,000 | 83 |
| 6 | Yunkyu Song | United States | 650,000 | 81 |
| 7 | Hiroto Watanabe | Japan | 637,000 | 80 |
| 8 | Paraskevas Tsokaridis | Greece | 559,000 | 70 |
| 9 | Wai Kiat Lee | Malaysia | 557,000 | 70 |
| 10 | Ramaswamy Pyloore | United States | 527,000 | 66 |
Former bracelet winners such as Anson Tsang, Jesse Lonis, Chance Kornuth, and Roman Hrabec were all in attendance but fell short of making the money.
Some notables that did make the money were Chris Moorman (213,000), Ryan Riess (164,000), Ky Nguyen (92,000), and Koray Aldemir (63,000).
Day 2 will kick off at 11 a.m. local time at the Horseshoe Provence, with the plan to play ten 60-minute levels. A dinner break is scheduled at the end of Level 21 (around 5:30 p.m.) and 15-minute breaks are scheduled every two levels. The blinds will start at Level 17 (4,000/8,000/8,000), as the bubble burst when the clock hit zero in Level 16 during hand-for-hand play.
PokerNews will be back tomorrow to provide expert coverage of the tournament as it progresses, so be sure to stay tuned to see who can make it through Day 2.
