Day 1 of Event #31: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Complete; Jason Pritchard Leads
Day 1 of Event #31: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em at the 45th Annual World Series of Poker is in the books. After 11 levels of play, the field is down to 187. The total amount of entries reached 1,631, creating a prize pool of $2,201,850. The field was quite a bit smaller than last year when, in 2013, Jason Duval won this event. Duval, from Quebec, Canada, earned $521,202 when he became the last player with chips in a field of 2,115 players.
This year, the champion will take home $418,435. There will be 171 places paid and a min-cash is worth $2,906. Earning a seat at the final table will have you walking away with no less than $29,658.
Leading the way on Day 1 was Jason Pritchard with 142,400. Other top stacks at the end of play were Kyle Weir (130,000), Guillame Fourcade (116,400), and Mike Del Vecchio (115,100).
Also returning for Day 2 will be Kitty Kuo and Bryan Reisner, and these two were involved in the largest pot of the tournament in one of the last hands of the night.
With a pot of around 30,000 and a flop reading 
, Kuo check-called a bet of 13,500 from Reisner. The turn brought the 
, Kuo checked, Reisner announced all in for his last 27,500, and Kuo went into the tank. After a few moments, Kuo apologized for taking the time, and eventually made the call.
Reisner: 
Kuo: 
The board finished off with a blank on the river and Reisner dragged in the 100,000-plus chip pot.
Event #31 attracted a lot of big pros and familiar faces. Some notables that bagged up stacks for Day 2 included Nenad Medic, Erik Cajelais, Ray Qartomy, Alex Bolotin, Vinny Pahuja, Ankush Mandavia, Adam Levy, Lauren Kling, Matt Stout, Ty Reiman, Daniel Idema, Max Pescatori, and Jackie Glazier.
Familiar faces not so fortunate were Vanessa Selbst, Darryll Fish, Antonio Esfandiari, Andre Akkari, Greg Mueller, Greg Raymer, Barry Greenstein, Faraz Jaka, Mike Leah, Tony Dunst, Jason Duval, Alec Torelli, Marc-Etienne McLaughlin, Allen Kessler, Liv Boeree, Phil Collins, Ami Barer, Xuan Liu, and Dominik Nitsche.
Day 2 will resume on Sunday at 1 p.m. PT inside the Amazon Room. The money bubble is sure to bust very quickly as the field is only 16 eliminations away from a cash. From there, it will play down a 10 full levels or until the final table is reached, whichever happens to come first. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for all of Day 2’s big pots and bust outs.
and Farrell led out for 2,000. Friedman raised it up to 7,000 and Farrell pushed all in. Friedman snap-called and the two were set for a sweat.
on the turn was harmless, but the 
on the river completed the flush and Farrell was sent home for the night.
![[user101598]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
flop, and Esfandiari check-raised a bet of 700 from Kuo, to 2,050. Kuo announced all in and Esfandiari thought for a moment before making the call, putting Kuo at risk.
with 
, Mark Reilly was thinking of what action to take with a bet of 2,000 sitting in front of his opponent, Allen Kessler. After a minute, he raised to 6,500 and Kessler snap-shoved hardly a second after the raise hit the felt. Reilly called and showed the nut flush draw with 
to Kessler's flopped set with 
to add a straight draw to Reilly's outs. The river fell 
and Reilly completed the straight to win the pot, eliminating Kessler from the tournament.
paired the board but made little difference to the hand. But the 
on the river gave Greenstein the flush and his opponent surrendered all of his chips to Greenstein's stack.
. Young check-called a 300-chip bet and on the turn the 
. The river brought the 
