Mueller Holds Monster Day 1 Chip Lead; Bonomo & Bardah Thrive
The 2013 World Series of Poker continued Thursday evening with the start of Event #37: $5,000 Limit Hold'em. The tournament attracted 170 runners—up four from last year's field of 166—and created a prize pool of $799,000. That will be distributed to the top 18 players with the eventual winner taking home $211,743. The man best positioned to make a run at the top prize of the 103 surviving players is monster chip leader Greg "FBT" Mueller, who finished with 94,600 after eight one-hour levels of play.
Given that it was a limit event, it took awhile for the action to heat up. When it did, the defending champ, Benjamin Scholl, was among the first to go. Last year Scholl could do no wrong as he captured the gold bracelet and accompanying $206,760 first-place prize. Five days ago, Scholl's run good continued as he finished runner-up to Tom Schneider in Event #29 $5,000 H.O.R.S.E. for $197,228. Unfortunately Scholl's momentum came to a screeching in the fourth level of the day.
It happened when Scholl, who had dwindled down to 800, raised to 600 from the cutoff. Sean Chen responded with a three-bet to 900 from the small blind, and after the big got out of the way, Scholl called off.
Scholl: 
Chen: 
Scholl seemed a bit frustrated, and understandably so as he was having the polar-opposite experience than a year ago. With that said, he was drawing to live cards. According to the PokerNews Odds Calculator, Scholl had a 30.98% of surviving the hand, though that dropped to 16.36% on the 
flop. Scholl was looking for some help on the turn, but instead the 
left him drawing dead as Chen improved to trips. The meaningless 
was run out on the river for good measure as Scholl made a beeline for the exit.
Others who joined him over the next five levels were Micah Raskin, John Hennigan, Carlos Mortensen, John Monnette, Mothel Santoro, Andy Bloch, Josh Arieh, Dan Kelly, JC Tran, Sam Grizzle, Maria Ho and Nick Abou Risk.
Not everyone was as unlucky as the aforementioned. Among the notables who survived the day were Todorovic Slavko (64,900), Brent Wheeler (57,500), Ronnie Bardah (54,800), Justin Bonomo (46,600), Brock Parker (46,100), Mike Leah (42,700), Jeff Shulman (42,200), Todd Witteles (38,200), Terrence Chan (35,000), Joe Cassidy (32,200), David Chiu (32,400), Ben Yu (30,300), Barry Greenstein (29,600), Mohsin Charania (27,700), Phil Ivey (24,200), Alexander Kostritsyn (17,000) and Daniel Negreanu (15,900).
Day 2 action is set to begin at 14:00 PST, so join us then as we bring you all the limit hold’em action you can handle from the Amazon Room inside the Rio All-Suite Casino in Las Vegas!