Booth, Mueller Lead after Day 1
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Day 1 of the 2011 Poker Player's Championship is history, and after five levels of play, Doug Booth is the chip leader with 324,600 chips, and Greg "FBT" Mueller is right behind him with 322,700.
Numbers have been up at the World Series of Poker this year, and this event did not disappoint. A total of 128 players - a 10 percent increase from last year - ponied up $50,000 generating a prizepool of $6,144,000. The winner will receive $1,720,328 to go along with a shiny new bracelet and the illustrious David "Chip" Reese Memorial Trophy.
Only five of the entrants busted during Day 1. Arturo Diaz was our first victim, and was eliminated by Phil Galfond during a hand of pot-limit Omaha. Galfond had a set of queens, Diaz a set of tens, and Galfond held when the river bricked. Phil Laak was the second to bust. He got his stack in against David "ODB" Baker during deuce-to-seven triple draw. They both held 
, Baker paired his deuce, and Laak paired his seven, eliminating him from the tournament.
Andrew Pantling, Jani Sointula, and Eli Elezra were the other two to bust on Day 1.
For a second it looked like Daniel Negreanu was also going to hit the rail. Kid Poker sunk as low as 23,000, but battled all the way back to 65,100 chips. During his comeback, he made the nuts in a deuce-to-seven hand against Robert Williamson III who drew the second nuts on the first draw. Negreanu is very excited to still be alive, tweeting, "So h[a]ppy to still be in it. Hope to run hot from here on out!"
Surprisingly, only two former champions participated in this year's event. David Bach and Michael Mizrachi were in attendance, while Freddy Deeb and Scotty Nguyen were notably absent. Bach did very well, bagging 249,500 chips, while Mizrachi struggled and only has 8,200 chips.
While Booth and Mueller lead, there are plenty of players biting their heels including Yan Chen (317,200), David Chiu (317,000), Alexey Makarov (266,000), Jason Lester (245,200), and Steve Sung (243,800).
Play will resume tomorrow at 3 p.m. PDT, where we will play five, one hundred-minute levels. Join us then for all of your up-to-the-minute updates.
Goodnight from the Rio!