Holding a pair of sixes in his hand and seeing four overcards on the board, Alex Fitzgerald was facing a bet from his opponent. Trusting his read, Fitzgerald opted to call with his lone pair of sixes and his opponent mucked his hand.
Fitzgerald has gotten off to a great start and his stack has skyrocketed to 230,000.
Table 345 might be the toughest table to start Day 2. Of the six sitting down, two have won bracelets this year (Allen Bari $5,000 No Limit Hold'em and Matt Perrins $1,500 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball) and another has millions in tournament earnings and is one of our chip leaders (Mohsin Charania).
Either way, it hasn't stopped Allen Bari from being very active early on.
The player on the button (who isn't one of the wildly successful tournament players sitting at his table) raised it up to 3,000 and Bari re-raised from the small blind to 8,600 and the player called.
The flop came down and Bari bet 4,300 with the button player calling. The turn came and Bari quickly bet out 9,200 and the player folded. Although he has been a little up and down today (he doubled a player up who had ) he is up for the day with around 60,000 in chips
Day 1 started with 1,278 players and now we are down to just 189 players vying for the bracelet and enormous $689,739 first prize. Of those 189, Tyler Cornell leads the way with 172,600 and is followed closely by the story of the tournament thus far, Jean-Robert Bellande with 144,700. Bellande was up and down all day but clearly had a strong finish to Day 1 and all eyes will be on him as things get serious here on Day 2. With 126 getting paid, it won't take too long for the money bubble to burst and for the real bracelet competitors to separate themselves from the field.
With these large No Limit Hold'em tournaments it's seldom to have lots of big names at the top, especially at the end of Day 1, but we have plenty of them here starting on Day 2 including, as mentioned above, Jean-Robert Bellande who is second in chips (144,700), Tuan Le (126,000), Mohsin Charnia (126,000), Olivier Busquet (109,100), Chris Moorman (90,000), Dan O'Brien (87,200), Ayaz Mahmood (86,000), Lex Veldhuis (82,300), Melanie Weisner (80,000), David Baker (80,000), and Jake Cody (70,000). Our chip leaders to end Day 1 were Tyler Cornell (172,000), Jean-Robert Bellande (144,700), Victor Shuchleib (137,900), Steve Barshak (132,700), and Alexander Fitzgerald (132,600) and as we get closer to hitting the money bubble and beyond, it is always interesting to see whether these names can continue to grow their stacks or simply fall back into the ranks of those who came close but not close enough.
Cards will be in the air very soon here in the Purple Section of the Amazon Room and it won't be a slow start so be sure to stay tuned in to PokerNews.com