A two-day tournament with an affordable $800 buy-in and 30-minute levels was always going to create plenty of action, which is precisely what happened on Day 1a of Event #80: $800 Independence Day Celebration. Day 1a drew in 2,864 entrants and ended after 22 levels, with only 150 players needing to bag up chips.
Bulgaria's Ivan Denev claimed the first flight's chip lead, followed by Michael Phillips, and Mark Seif.
End of Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivan Denev | Bulgaria | 2,480,000 | 62 |
| 2 | Michael Phillips | United States | 2,010,000 | 50 |
| 3 | Mark Seif | United States | 1,895,000 | 47 |
| 4 | Lukas Hafner | Austria | 1,875,000 | 47 |
| 5 | Brandon Sheils | United Kingdom | 1,865,000 | 47 |
| 6 | Yoshiya Agata | Japan | 1,860,000 | 47 |
| 7 | Shalom Elharar | United States | 1,785,000 | 45 |
| 8 | Agharzi Babayev | Azerbaijan | 1,780,000 | 45 |
| 9 | Alexander Petrucelli | United States | 1,505,000 | 38 |
| 10 | Yuzu Wang | China | 1,485,000 | 37 |
Seif is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner, winning the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout and the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em events in 2005. He already has five cashes at the 2024 WSOP, including a 12th-place finish in the $1,000 Senios Championship, which came with $44,153 in prize money.
Popular British professional Brandon Sheils finds himself in fifth place in the overnight chip counts. Sheils comes from a poker-playing family and has some superb results to his name. He'll go into Day 2 hoping to improve his 15th-place finish in the 2023 Monster Stack, the deepest he's run in a live WSOP event.
Some of the other grinders who made it through 22 levels included Oliver Price, Men "The Master" Nguyen, Martin Zamani, Dan Heimiller, 2010 WSOP Main Event sixth-place finisher John Dolan, Kevin MacPhee, and Ari Engel.
The 150 surviving players get to enjoy Fourth of July celebrations safe in the knowledge they have a seat waiting for them on Day 2 on July 5. They will keep an eye on the Day 1b action, which starts at 10 a.m. local time on July 4, to see who they could face on the business end of this event.
Until then, stay tuned for PokerNews as we bring you all the updates you can handle from the 2024 World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.
