Jason Johnson Holds Substantial Lead at End of Day
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Day 1 of Event #44: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em has come to an end and the field was left very close to the money. Only 14 spots separate the remaining players from cashing in the event.
On Day 1 there were 1,914 players who coughed up the $1,500 buy-in to create a prize pool of $2,583,900. The top spot will pay $478,102 to go along with the enviable gold bracelet that will be awarded to the champion.
Standing on top of the field going into Day 2 was Jason Johnson with 150,900 — a substantial lead over Louis Laxineta with the second-largest stack of 111,600. Only six players managed to creep past the 100,000 mark and Johnson is the one the catch.
Johnson has had a successful Series already. We saw him make it to the final table of the first $1,500 no-limit hold’em event of the summer — the ever-popular Millionaire Maker. He earned $211,394 for that deep run, and he is poised to repeat his performance here in Event #44.
Many familiar faces took a seat in the Brasilia Room on Day 1, and among those who did not survive until the end of play were Kevin MacPhee, Stephen Chidwick, Marc-Etienne McLaughlin, Bryan Micon, Jesse Sylvia, Jimmy Fricke, Andrea Dato, Ryan D’Angelo, Mike Leah, Jason Koon, Joe Cada, Erik Seidel, Kara Scott, Antonio Esfandiari, Jake Cody, Kitty Kuo, Greg Raymer, Andre Akkari, Jeff Gross, Marvin Rettenmaier, Ami Barer, Shannon Shorr, Martin Finger, and Vladimir Geshkenbein.
Of those that did bag and tag, some of the notables included Nicholas Yunis (72,800), Thomas Muehloecker (77,600), Artem Metalidi (64,000) Victor Ramdin (60,400), Joe Serock (58,600), Max Silver (43,400), Vinny Pahuja (25,400), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (23,000), Sofia Lövgren (17,800), as well as Tristan Wade, Barry Greenstein, Loni Harwood, and Jackie Glazier.
Play will resume at 1 p.m. on Sunday in the Amazon Room, and it won’t take long until the bubble is burst and the tournament is in the money. Until then, have a good night, and enjoy this video of Let's Get Weird.