Today was one of the shorter days on the calendar here at the WSOP as we have just completed Day 1 of Event #36 $1,500 shootout. As opposed to your traditional MTT, this tournament plays out in sit-n-go formats. All of the 120 players who have advanced to Day 2 won their table of either nine or ten players, and will be moving on to tomorrow to try and do the same.
We had a handful of notables who emerged with all the chips at their table. Some of them were Bertrand Grospellier, Amanda Musumeci, Taylor Paur, Nacho Barbero, Peter Jetten, Gavin Smith, Andy Seth, Ari Engel, Ray Henson, Matt Berkey, Eric Baldwin, Brent Hanks, Erik Seidel, Allen Kessler, and Maxim Lykov, amongst others.
This of course is a popular event, so there were a ton of big names that weren’t able to make it through, including Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, David “Bakes” and “ODB” Baker, and Eugene Katchalov, Michael Mizrachi, Tristan Wade, Jason Mercier, Randy Lew, Matt Salsberg, and Tommy Vedes were amongst the players who just missed out, losing their heads up matches.
The 120 players who moved on will come back tomorrow at 1 PM and play in the Amazon room. Once again, the tables will be 10-handed, and only 12 players will make it to Day 3. Be sure to come back to Pokernews.com for all of the live coverage, and good night from Las Vegas!
We passed by Eric Baldwin's table as he began heads up play and he said "let's hope this doesn't take seven hours", in reference to his heads up match against Matt Waxman in Event #7 in which he finished second.
Baldwin was victorious in his match and even saw the bright side of busting the PLO event early enough to late register for this one. Also joining Baldwin on Day 2, are recent table winners Devin Looney and Andrea Dato.
The tournament has its first winner in Kevin Vandersmissen. Vandersmissen defeated David Yeazell after just a few hands of heads up play to secure his spot in the next round.
Welcome to Day 1 of Event #36: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Shootout.
Players will begin with 4,500 chips and they have one goal for today and that is to win their table. Every table winner will make the money and advance to Day 2. The tournament is capped at 2,000 players and registration is still open with play set to begin today at 12 p.m. in the Brasilia Room.
In last year’s event, Brandon Schaefer prevailed over 1,138 players and took home the first-place prize of $311,174 plus the gold bracelet. You can expect plenty of "bracelet hunting" professionals in the field today with live coverage of today's event happening right here at PokerNews.
While you are waiting for play to begin, here is your June 20th update from the 2013 WSOP:
