That's a Wrap; Day 1 is History

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Day 1 of the largest poker tournament ever assembled in Lebanon is now in the books. The evening began with 207 runners each putting up the $10,000 buyin, exceeding the stated capacity by seven players. The guarantee of $1,000,000 was easily eclipsed, and very nearly double that amount of cash is up for grabs to the remaining players. When the clock ticked down on the eighth and final level of Day 1, it appears that 112 players still have chips left, earning them a seat for Day 2 tomorrow.

We didn't expect to see too many familiar faces here, and indeed there weren't a lot of them. Of course, we did have Lebanese native Joe Hachem with us, though his tournament lasted just a couple short hours before he ran his short-stacked {A-Clubs}

into pocket kings. Good game, Champ. Despite that most notable exit, we do still have three very familiar names who'll be joining us again tomorrow. Nenad Medic has had trouble getting things going today, and he'll be on a short stack when he returns tomorrow. It looks like a full night's sleep will do the pro well; he's been yawning and nodding off since the dinner break ended. Another short-stacked notable is Raymond Rahme, part of a strong South African contingent here at the LPC.

Our last truely familiar face is not at all short stacked. Chris Karagulleyan jumped out of the gate today with an early double up, and his stack has been moving in the right direction since then. He's been in and out of the chip lead all day, and he'll bag up 139,200 chips to finish the day, putting him within arm's length of the chip lead.

That's a decent stack, but everyone is chasing another man. When Karagulleyan hasn't been in the lead today, Nicolas Zakem has been. Zakem has been steamrolling his competition for most of the late evening, becoming the first player to crest 150,000 shortly after the dinner break. At the end of play tonight, he's stuffed his tiny little chip bag with a whopping 157,000 chips, good enough to earn himself the title of overnight chip leader. A few players began to close the gap as the night pressed on though, and Mark Demirijian, Adham Homsi, and Sherif Zacca are among those within striking distance of Zakem.

Play will resume at 4:00pm tomorrow, and we expect to be in for a long day. The tentative plan is to play down to our final table of nine, but the staff has hinted at the fact that we may only make it down to the last two tables before we run out of moonlight. In any event, that's all she wrote for Day 1. Thanks for joining us here; we'll see you tomorrow!

Tags: Nicolas Zakem