Dempsey Down
You might notice that James Dempsey -- who already has one bracelet this summer, having won Event #9, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em event -- no longer appears at the top of the chip counts. In fact, he did just lose a big pot, but nowhere near as big as one might think given that the official counts from the WSOP had him starting the day with more than 140,000.
Dempsey's total at the end of Day 1a was misreported somewhere along the line. In truth, he had about 40,000 at night's end. (Looks like an extra "1" might have popped in their somewhere.) In any event, our real leaders -- Tommaso Briotti, Eelke Arjaans, and Andrew Talbot -- all started the day in the 70,000-80,000 chip range.
Just now Dempsey was involved in a hand in which a short-stacked player was all in with 
against Dempsey's 
. The flop came 
, giving Dempsey a set and making it look like he was about to get a boost to that stack. But the turn brought the 
, taking the advantage away. The river was the 
, and Dempsey takes a hit early.
Dempsey sits with 26,000 at present. Really.