Before the chaos, we went through half the room and noted some of the players who had taken their seat. We'll get to the second half of the room after play resumes.
A sea of floor calls from dealers swept the room. After a few moments, they announced that they were pausing the clock until they figure out how to deal with a slight problem. That problem? Many tables are short-handed and there are a ton of stacks that are out of play.
After an explanation of how they are going to proceed to the players in the room, the floor is going to each table in the room and instructing the dealers on what they need to do. Sold seats will remain in play and out of play stacks will be put in the well.
Tournament Director Jack Effel had this to say about the situation on Twitter:
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The 2014 World Series of Poker is about to start it's fourth day of action and the first event to get underway will be a $1,500 buy-in no-limit hold'em shootout. If the attendance from the prior events is any indicator, today's turnout should exceed the 1,194 that took part in this event last year. We're already in excess of 700 entrants as players start to file in.
Last year, the winner of this event was Simeon Naydenov from Bulgaria who bested runner-up Jake Schwartz to take home an impressive $326,440. Others making deep runs in this event last year included Nacho Barbero, Mike Watson, Noah Bronstein, and Erik Seidel.
This event has a unique format as it is a series of single-table satellites where the winner advances to the next round. Today they will play until there is a winner at each table. On Day 2, the remaining field will be randomly drawn evenly into 20 tables and they will play down until there is a winner at each table leaving us with two tables for the third and final day.
Cards will be in the air shortly. PokerNews will be here for all the action so check back in often.