Day One Is Done - No Pain For Paino
Eight levels ago we started with a large field of 346 players who ponied up a lazy ten large for their place in this star-studded Pot-Limit Omaha field. The triple chance format gave players an opportunity to gamble it up in the early stages without fear of going broke, and as such, the eliminations were few and far between in the early goings.
After dinner everyone was on an even playing field and we were able to get a feel for who was ascending and who was just pretending.
Men Nguyen, Noah Boeken, Greg Raymer and Vanessa Selbst were some who rose to the top early, before late surges from James Akenhead (181,100), Dimitry Stelmak (226,000), Felix Gubitz (178,600), Mikhail Smirnov (169,800), Eli Elezra (101,500) and Australian Tony Paino (240,000) saw them top the charts towards the end of the day. There will also be some rumblings amongst the poker fraternity as young guns Tom Dwan and Annette Obrestad collected some late offerings to bag up over 100,000 chips to be in contention entering day two tomorrow.
We'll have somewhere around 170 players returning tomorrow with a massive task ahead of us to get anywhere near a final table tomorrow. Join us tomorrow from 3pm to see how it all goes down!