Leah and Raymer Bag Big after Day 1 of Event #82: $1,500 Double Stack No-Limit Hold'em
Day 1 of Event #82: $1,500 Double Stack No-Limit Hold'em. is in the books and what a day of action it was. The field drew a large number of entries with 2,591 players taking their seats. Play was fast and furious as more than 85% of the field were eliminated 20 levels of play. The tournament made it all the way into the money, ending the night with approximately 360 players.
After the chips stopped flying for the night, Mike Leah emerged as one of the largest stacks in the room with an astounding 1,628,000 which is more than 30 times the 50,000 starting stack. He was spotted late in the night with some enormous stacks of chips; he clearly had a good day of poker.
At least three other players bagged over 1 million in chips. Kaylan Chakravarthy bagged 1,174,000, Justin Harvell finished the night with 1,157,000 and none other than former WSOP Main Event champion Greg Raymer accumulated an impressive stack of 1,030,000.
Several other well-known players bagged chips and will return on Friday for Day 2. These include; Ismael Bojang (860,000), Valentin Vornicu (748,000), Ryan Laplante (682,000), Scott Eskenazi (666,000), Phil Hellmuth (507,400) and Joseph Cheong (499,800).
Play slowed before the money bubble was reached, very late during the last level of play, and then a flurry of eliminations followed to cut the field further with many players hit the rail.
Play will resume at 12 p.m. local time on Friday at Level 21 with blinds at 8,000/16,000 and a big blind ante of 16,000. Levels will be 40 minutes on Day 2, which is longer than the 30-minute levels that were played on Day 1. The plan is to play down to a winner tomorrow but of course, things are always up to the discretion of the tournament supervisor and those plans could change if need be.
PokerNews will provide all the updates as this fast-paced exciting tournament continues tomorrow.
. Bicknell seemed torn over the decision but eventually tossed in the one chip call. 
and Bicknell showed 
for the straight. The dealer counted out that he was covered and he sat there for a bit not sure how he was beat until the dealer showed him the straight and he walked away.
. Sasha Liu bet 12,000 and was called by Neil Blumenfield after he thought for a few moments. 
. Liu waited for about 15 seconds before putting a stack of the big chips into the middle to force Blumenfield all in and he swiftly got out the way as he tossed his cards to the dealer before Liu could take her hand off the chips she put forward.
