Antoine Saout Leads at the End-of-Day 1
Day 1 of Event #30 of the 2013 World Series of Poker has been completed and it is Antoine Saout who is the man to catch going into Monday's Day 2.
The Brasilia Room was packed to bursting as 2,018 players exchanged $1,000 for 3,000 tournament chips and the chance to become a WSOP champion. Of these 2,018 players only 216 remain, meaning we lost over 90% of the field over the course of 11 60-minute levels.
As mentioned, it is Antoine Saout who leads the way in this event, having turned his starting stack into a colossal 131,700 chips. Frenchman Saout is no stranger to the WSOP staff and has been in similar positions on many occasions. You may recall that Saout finished third in the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $3,479,670 and while he would not win anywhere near as much if he goes all the way in this particular tournament, we are sure the $346,332 and a piece of poker jewellery would be most welcomed.
Each of the 216 players who return to the Rio tomorrow at 13:00 local time will do so safe in the knowledge they will receive no less than $1,935 in prize money. This is because tournament manager Dennis Jones made play continue until the money bubble had burst. The unfortunate bubble boy was Tai Nguyen, who finished third in Event #18. Nguyen moved all in with 
and was looked up by 
. By the river the board read 
and the money bubble burst, while the now in the money players erupted into rapturous applause and cheers.
Among those returning to the felt on Monday are Alex Bolotin (103,800), Dimitar Yosifov (96,900), Chris Dombrowski (93,400), Tomas Pleticha (92,300), Eddy Sabat (56,000), Randy Lew (51,800), Kevin MacPhee (37,900) and Andrew Lichtenberger (36,000).
Join the PokerNews Live Reporting team from 13:00 PT on Monday for all of the action as we play another 10 levels and possibly reach a final table.