One Man's Trash...
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We've been hearing one account after another about the number of players that were freerolled into this event by the casino and by Harrah's. Some 200 seats were given away for this tournament, many of them awarded at random or high-carded away to players gambling downstairs in the poker room. We even heard one player saying that the strip club nearby was giving away seats to the tournament.
In any event, that inflation of the field has shown here today as we've had a few strange situations arise. The latest one occurred over here on the near side of the room, at one of the center tables. The player in Seat 6 caught our eye as he was playing every single pot for a big over-raise. He had built up a stack of about 70,000, and he seemed to be in no mood to hang on to them.
A little more eavesdropping and loitering around the table finally gave us the scoop. We overheard the young man saying that he was unable to return tomorrow for Day 2, and that he needed to be eliminated or build a massive stack trying. His table mates were in disbelief, and they asked him why he bothered to show up today. "They give you a free seat, you're gonna say no?" he responded.
Finally, though, someone got to him. It was Jason Kolpin who came in with a standard raise before Seat 6 reraised to something like 30,000. Kolpin shoved for just over 50,000, and his opponent quickly called with 
. Kolpin's 
were in fine shape, and they held on a board full of rags to earn him a massive double up and the chip lead. The player in Seat 6 was eliminated a few hands later, and we've just counted Kolpin down at 130,000, easily good enough for the chip lead right now.