Matt O'Donnell Leads Advancing 169 Players; NBA's Paul Pierce Bags Plenty of Chips
On the eve of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event, the penultimate tournmanet—Event #61: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha—kicked off with 386 players, which represented a 30% increase over last year’s field of 297 players. After eight one-hour levels of play, Matt O'Donnell is best positioned to make a run at the $852,692 first-place prize as he leads the 169 advancing players with 269,200. Quite a few of O'Donnell's chip came in the last hand of the night, which you can read about by clicking here.
Others who bagged big stacks are Jonathan Duhamel (253,000), Jared Bleznick (246,500), Alexey Rybin (245,600), Joseph Cheong (244,800), Scott Palmer (190,300), Mike Watson (158,500) and the NBA's Paul Pierce (143,100).
Pierce was extremely active throughout the day and it seemed to pay off, especially in Level 8 when he made a full house against John Kabbaj. Pierce, formerly of the Boston Celtics and now playing for the Brooklyn Nets, will enter Day 2 with a decent stack and looks to add a gold bracelet to go with his NBA Championship ring.
Obviously not everyone was as fortunate as the aforementioned players. Among those to hit the rail on Day 1 were Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky, A.P. Phahurat, John Juanda, Matt Marafioti, David Williams, Daniel Weinman, Josh Arieh, John Beauprez, Erick Lindgren, Ashly Butler, Justin Bonomo, Michael Mizrachi, David “Doc” Sands, Scott Clements, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein and high-stake online regular Hac Dang.
Dang’s elimination came on the last hand of Level 3. There was approximately 2,000 in the pot and a flop reading 
when Dang checked from middle position and Justin "Boosted J" Smith bet 2,000 from the cutoff. Dang took his time before dropping in a call and then checked after the dealer burned and turned the 
. Smith waited about 45 seconds before betting 6,300 and Dang responded with a check-raise all in. "I call," Smith whispered.
Dang: 
Smith: 
Dang had flopped top set but was behind the straight of Smith. The 
failed to pair the board on the river and Dang rapped the table, stood and then exited the tournament.
Likewise, the defending champion, Jan-Peter Jachtmann, was unable to survive the day. He fell in the last level of the night after first being crippled by Tom Marchese and then eliminated. In the final hand, Jachtmann got his stack all in preflop holding the 
and was up against Marchese's 
. The 
flop gave Jachtmann the lead with a pair of eights and a flush draw, but Marchese took it back when the 
turn paired his king. The 
river gave Marchese two pair and would be the last card Jachtmann would see in the very event he won one year ago.
While many fell there are still quite a few big-name players left in the field including Christian Harder (153,400), Nacho Barbero (138,800), Matt Stout (121,600), Daniel Alaei (111,800), Ben "Bttech86" Tollerene (89,300), Jason Mercier (83,400), Eric Baldwin (77,100), Brian Hastings (72,800), Marcel Luske (68,000), Tom Marchese (63,100), Darryll Fish (59,400), Jan Collado (36,700), Phil Hellmuth (33,200) and Daniel Negreanu (29,900).
Day 2 action will begin at 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday. Join us then as we bring you another full day of action, which will include Day 1a of the $10,000 Main Event. Until then good night from the Rio All-Suite Casino in Las Vegas!