Sam Trickett Leads as 170 Players Advance from Strong Day 1 Field
Event #35: $5,000 Eight-Handed No-Limit Hold'em is a popular one on the World Series of Poker schedule. In 2013, the tournament attracted 481 players, but this year it was bigger and better as 550 players created a prize pool of $2,585,000, which will be distributed to the top 56 players with the winner taking home $633,341.
After 10 one-hour levels of play, just 170 made it through to Day 2 with Sam Trickett and his stack of 172,000 leading the way. Others who bagged up big stacks were Dan Smith (144,000), Steven Kerr (122,900), Fred Kulikowski (122,500), Noah Vaillancourt (119,000), and Josh Bergman (118,300).
Kerr won a big pot from Zimnan Ziyard on a board of 
. Ziyard's 
was no good against Kerr's 
.
PokerNews actually caught up with Steven Kerr, who considers himself an amateur, to talk about his Day 1 experience against some of the game’s best:
Of course, not everyone was so lucky. Among those to fall on Day 1 were Antonio Esfandiari, WSOP.com qualifier Brandon Merrill, Jesse Sylvia, Andrew Lichtenberger, Scott Seiver, Jonathan Little, Paul Volpe, Liv Boeree, Erik Seidel, and Phil Hellmuth.
The “Poker Brat” fell in Level 8 (250/500/50) when Samuel Bernabeu opened for 1,025 and Hellmuth three-bet to approximately 3,000. Bernabeu held 
and opted to flat-call. Bernabeu then check-called a bet of 3,500 on the 
flop before both players checked the 
turn. When a 
appeared on the river, Bernabeu simply moved all in. Hellmuth couldn't seem to believe it, double checked his cards and then called off his last 7,000 or so with . Unfortunately for him, his rivered set was no good and he was sent out the door.
Hundreds fell by the wayside on Day 1, but plenty of notables managed to survive the night. Among those returning on Day 2 are Jeff Madsen (114,500), Chris Tryba (111,900), Sorel Mizzi (84,000), Jason Somerville (78,200), Dan Shak (77,000), Mike “Timex” McDonald (51,000), Vanessa Selbst (39,500), Igor Kurganov (39,200), Jennifer Tilly (36,200), Philipp Gruissem (28,700), John Juanda (25,200), and Jason Mercier (18,200).
Day 2 action is set to get underway at 1 p.m. local time on Tuesday, and the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be on hand to bring you all the action and eliminations from the tournament floor, so be sure to join us then. In the meantime, check this video where poker veteran Steve Zolotow talks about his first WSOP experience: