Andrew Brown Among Leaders After Day 1 of $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better, Lawrence Michael Leads
Day 1 of the first non-Hold'em event of the summer has now come to an end after ten exciting levels of play in Event #4: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better. The first day had 853 players walk through the doors of the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino to shoot for a Day 2 seat, with just 373 players bagging chips by the nights end, with Lawrence Michael leading the way with 79,000 in chips.
Andrew Brown is right on his tail with just 1,000 fewer in chips. Brown stayed relatively silent for most of the day, finding most of his stack during the last level of play. He will be starting the second day with 78,000 in chips and has all the experience to continue his dominance, with over one million in cashes and most of them coming in non-Hold'em events. His second biggest cash came in 2008 when he took down the $2,000 Omaha Hi-Lo event for $226,483 for his only WSOP bracelet.
Close behind Brown on the leaderboard is Derek McMaster with a healthy sized stack of 66,700. Some other stacks on the bigger side to make it through include Eric Watkins (61,100), Curtis Phelps (58,200) and three-time bracelet winner Ian Johns (53,800).
There was a star-studded line up in today's field and some bracelet winners to make it out of the field to Day 2 are John Esposito (46,500), David Benyamine (39,600), Allyn Shulman (38,600), John Monnette (23,700), Daniel Negreanu (17,700), and coming in as the short stack is Shaun Deeb (2,000).
A lot of poker players took a shot today, unfortunately not all could make it through when the last chance saloon had closed for business and some to fall short of a Day 2 appearance included Allen Kessler, Layne Flack, Andrey Zhigalov, Perry Friedman, Rex Clinkscales, Barry Greenstein, Max Pescatori and 15-time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who spent much of his day performing as 'MC' at the Gavin Smith Memorial Tournament.
The remaining 373 runners will be coming back tomorrow at 2.00 pm local time and will play another ten 60-minute levels. A total of 245 players will need to take an exit tomorrow in order to hit the money, with 128 players securing a $2,257 min-cash. The eventual winner will be pocketing an immense $228,288 first place cash prize along with a WSOP gold bracelet.
They will be returning to blinds of 500/1,000 and limits of 1,000/2,000. There will be a 15-minute break after every two levels of play and a 60-dinner break will be added at the end of level six.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be bringing you all the live coverage throughout the remainder of this event, so stay tuned as all the action unfolds.