Welcome to your daily round up of all things WSOP. We have just reached the end of the first day of open play of Event no.2, $1500 No Limit Hold 'Em. Event no.1 the $500 Casino Employees No Limit Hold 'Em also reached it's conclusion a few hours ago with Chiab “Chip” Saechao taking home the coveted gold bracelet and a nice little windfall of almost $71k for besting the 732 strong field.
Saechao had ended day one as the chip leader and managed to stay in contention throughout the day, although he slowly slipped down the leader board, entering the final table in 8th position. He also took it relatively easy once at the final table as the crazy action all around him lead to some quickfire eliminations. With five players remaining however Saechao entered the fray and quickly established himself as the one to beat after winning consecutive coin flips - the first one almost certainly being a large contributing factor to Saecho's overall victory as he doubled up at the expense of the player who eventually finished in second place, Patricia Baker. Saecho's 10 10 looked to be beaten by Baker's AQ as a Q fell on the flop - a 10 on the turn however left Baker drawing dead and the irrelevant Q on the river could no longer come to Baker's rescue.
Saecho went on to send three of his four remaining competitors to the rail as he scooped the first Bracelet of the 2012 WSOP. Congratulations Chiab!
The second event ($1500 NLHE) brought a huge field of 2,101 players and an equally impressive first placce prize of $517,725 for the eventual winner. As you might expect from such a vast field we have a lot of major talent in the line up - far too many to list here - but of course a lot of attention focussed on the return of Phil Ivey to the WSOP after last years self imposed exile. Alas the "Tiger Woods of Poker" couldn't summon up any magic here and was one of the enormous 1,861 players who went to the rail in the opening 11 hours of play.
The current chip leader is Sadan Turker - a player who knows all about navigating huge NLHE fields, having placed second for $377k in last years $1k event but he sits among esteemed company as WSOP bracelet holders Eli Elezra (2nd, 155,900), Brandon Cantu (4th, 130,100) and Layne Flack (11th, 74,500) all sit high on the leaderboard.
A few more big names who have performed well today with their initial 4,500 chips include; Noah Schwartz (69,700) John Juanda (67,000) Vanessa Selbst (52,300), Phil Hellmuth (44,600), JP Kelly (43,100) and Jason Mercier (41,900). Big names (other than Ivey) to fall by the wayside included; Vanessa Rousso, Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier, Carlos Mortensen, Sam Trickett, Barry Greenstein, Brian Hastings, Isaac Haxton and Michael Mizrachi (and many, many more!!)
The event resumes later today with on level 11 with blinds at 500/1000 with a 100 ante - we should see the bubble burst within the first couple of hours as 216 of the remaining 240 players will make the money.
Find more news and articles relating to the World Series of Poker in the 2012 WSOP-section.