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Tue, Jul 7th, 2009 @ 12:00am
The special guests at the Main Event of the World Series of Poker for today were ESPN announcers Lon McEachern and Norman Chad. Lon issued the order to "Shuffle Up and Deal!" shortly after noon.Day 1D saw 2,809 players hit the felt, bringing the total player count for the main event to 6,494. Day 1D reached capacity and registration was closed before cards were in the air. This is the first time in history that registration was closed before play began on the final starting day. Every poker table available at the Rio was in use at the start of play (9-handed) including all tables in Amazon, Brasilia, Miranda, the Poker Room, and the hallway between the Rio and the Convention Center.The total prize pool is an impressive $61,043,600 which will be split among the final 648 players. This year's November Niners will all be poker-made millionaires and tenth through eighteenth will be guaranteed over half a million for their efforts. Here are the final table payouts: ..Place.. Prize1.. $8,546,4352.. $5,182,6013.. $3,479,4854.. $2,502,7875.. $1,953,3956.. $1,587,1337.. $1,404,0028.. $1,300,2289.. $1,263,602There are no official numbers on how many players were turned away, but unofficial estimates are that close to 800 players missed out on the main event this year. Some notable players who did not make it in are Mickey Appleman, Brandon Adams, Patrik Antonius, and T.J. Cloutier.2008 WSOP Main Event champ Peter Eastgate was on feature table one all day today — no pressure. He managed to pick up a few chips during the day and will return for day 2B on Wednesday.Phil Ivey's table was selected by ESPN to be the second feature table, bit Phil requested a pass on that honor, much to the chagrin of this table-mates. His request was granted and Erick Lindgren's table was promoted to feature table two. Both Phil and Erick will be back for day 2B.2002 Main Event Champion Robert Varkonyi and his wife Olga both played today. Robert will return on day 2B but Olga will not.Brock Parker, who won two bracelets this year, won't be making it a hat-trick as he busted out today. Josh Arieh, who has two bracelets from prior years, played today and will return for day 2B. There were quite a few celebrities in the house today. Actor and comedian Ray Romano played today and although Everybody loves Raymond, Raymond didn't love poker today. He reported to the rail before the dinner break. (His former co-star Brad Garrett played an earlier day one and survived. He will return on day 2A with 36,625 chips.) Simpsons creator Sam Simon, Actors Lou Diamond Phillips, Marlon Wayans, and Shannon Elizabeth, Godsmack lead singer Sully Erna, rocker Scott Ian, former NBA player John Salley and Actor/producer/director/writer Joe Reitman (better known as Annie Duke's main squeeze) all graced the felt today. Salley and Sully reported to the rail but it appears the rest are coming back on Wednesday to continue play.Also playing today was Hal Lubarsky. Hal suffers from macular degeneration and is legally blind, so he uses a 'reader' who sits beside him and whispers his cards into his ear. In order to avoid any possibility of cheating, they use one of the local dealers for this purpose. Hal managed to cash in the main event here in 2007, finishing 197th for $51,398. Hal and his reader will be back for day 2B.Other notables who will be back for day 2B: two-time WSOP bracelet winner Josh Arieh, Dutch Boyd, Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, Blair Hinkle, JC Tran, David Benyamine, Thomas 'Thunder' Keller, Chad Brown, Marco Traniello and Jennifer Harman, Kenny Tran, Scott Seiver, Lee Markholt, Nam Le, Kathy Liebert, Bernard Lee, Max Pescatori, Michael 'the Grinder' Mizrachi, Bill Gazes, Matt Brady, Phil Gordon, Young Phan, Ryan Young, Nick Schulman, Antonio Esfandiari, Chau Giang, Tim Vance, Lee Markholt, Cyndy Violette, Vivek Rajkumar, Eric Froehlich, John Spadavecchia, Robert Williamson III, Tom 'durrr' Dwan, Humberto Brenes, David Chiu, Nenad Medic, Surinder Sunar, $50k HORSE champ David Bach, Victor Ramdin, Daniel Alaei, and Vanessa Rousso.
These folks will be looking for something else to do on Wednesday, since they won't be coming back here: Michael Binger, Steve Sung, Chip Jett, Pat Pezzin, Scott Clements, Scott Fischman, Amir Vahedi, Sean Sheikhan, David Williams, Grant Hinkle, Mimi Tran, Jared Hamby, Svetlana Gromenkova, Jeff Madsen, Mark Seif, Phil Galfond, Peter 'nordberg' Feldman, Roy 'the Oracle' Winston, Lyle Berman, Dario Minieri, and November Niners Ivan Demidov and Scott Montgomery.Unofficial end of day 1D chip leader is Troy Weber with 353,000. (No, that is not a typo.) He managed to multiply his starting stack by more than eleven over five levels of play.Day 2A begins Tuesday at noon with the survivors of days 1A & 1B. Day 2B with the survivors from today and day 1C begins Wednesday at noon.