The main tournament room will go by the name Majestic 1 but the second room that will be used for all the day one action is just as stacked. This is the first half of the famous faces we've recognized.
The action folds around to Alex Wice on the button who raises to 150 and Philip Huxley calls in the small blind. The flop is and Huxley checks to Wice who bets 175 and Huxley very quickly check-raises to 525 and Wice makes an even quicker call. The turn is the and Huxley leads for 1,150 and Wice calls and both players give up on the river of and the dealer shoves the chips over to Wice.
Martin Jacobson has just taken 1,850 from the Toby Lewis stack after clawing three streets of value from early position holding on a board. Lewis was seated in the big blind and mucked his hand unseen after calling the final river bet of 1,125.
Jacobson then kept the momentum up by the winning the very next hand.
There was a raise of 150 from under the gun and both blinds called (inc Jacobson in the big). The flop was and all three players checked before Jacobson fired out a bet of 225 to win the pot at the sight of the turn.
We join the action on a flop of and over 3,000 in the pot. Maria Ho has checked to Pierre Husson and he has bet 1,625 and Ho is in the tank. She has around starting stack and she makes the call. The turn of is checked through and the final card floated down from the hand of the dealer is the and once again Ho checks but has to surrender her hand to the 2,725 bet of Husson.
We have now hit the 306 player mark with no sign of stopping. Tables are popping up all over the place and tables 29 and 30 are right in the middle of the media centre. Table 31 is housing Titan Poker stablemates Sam Trickett and Marvin Rettenmaier and table 29 is housing last years WSOPE Main Event Champion James Bord.
Since play started about 50 minutes ago we've lost 9 players and among those we see November Nine final tablist Phil Collins. We didn't witness his bust out but Stephen Chidwick, who sat next to him, told us what happened.
Collins saw a four way flop, , and decided to check raise the 300 bet making it 800. His opponent opted to call and a appeared on the turn. Collins bet 1.000 and after he got raised to 3.000 he decided to stick in the rest of his chips. Unfortunately his opponent had flopped a set of eights and wasn't going nowhere. The Collins was holding couldn't improve on the river and we say goodbye to one of the finalists that will be playing for the big bucks in November.
While Phil Collins, who just busted, has his shot at the millions a month from now, Filippo Candio had his chance last year. The flamboyant Italian managed to finish fourth for just over three million dollar in the 2010 Main Event and has been a regular on the tournament circuit ever since. Todays tournament is not going the right way so far.
We picked up the action when Candio and his opponent had already reached the river. The board read with around 2.100 chips in the middle when Candio bet 1.600 from the small blind. His Russian opponent, Vasily Kurdin, gave it some thought and decided to raise making it 3.425. Candio almost snap called and mucked his face up after Kurdin showed him for the nut flush.