Kevin Dowling Leads Seniors Event After Day 1
A record-breaking field sat down today for Event #31: Seniors Event and at the end of it, 694 remain. A total of 5,389 players sat down, besting the previous record of 4,499 from last year. This was in part due to the new re-entry policy available to players.
The event becomes the 23rd biggest WSOP field size ever, just under 300 players short of the field size of the 2005 WSOP Main Event.
Big names and amateurs, November Niners and first-timers. All different types of players joined the event to start on their quest to winning the ‘Golden Eagle Trophy’ including defending champion Johnnie Craig.
He was joined by the likes of Neil Blumenfield and Cliff Josephy, former WSOP Main Event Champions Greg Raymer, Chris Ferguson, Scotty Nguyen and big names such as Billy Baxter, Mike Sexton, Men Nguyen, Barry Greenstein and Bill Klein.
The payouts were confirmed today and the money bubble burst. Those lucky enough to make it into the top 809 were rewarded with a $1,499 payout, but all will be setting their sights on the $617,303 for first prize and a much-coveted WSOP gold bracelet.
This first prize is the third highest payout in Seniors Event history and is a bigger first prize than 58 of last year’s 69 bracelet events.
By the end of the day it is Kevin Dowling who leads the remaining players bagging up an astonishing 160,800 from the starting stack of 5,000. That is 33 starting stacks and Dowling explained that it should really have been another player at his table who bagged up the chip lead.
"He had a good chip lead and was probably the tournament boss, but he lost with King-ten against Kings on a ten-high board,
"Then I got pocket nines in against his flush draw and he got eliminated. That was an hour ago and if he won both of those he would have been here and not me.
When we informed him that he was potentially the chip leader, he let himself have a little fist pump after a long day's play
"It's just been general accumulation over the course of the day."
Other stacks around the Amazon room come the close of play include: Georgios Karakousis (158,300), Martinus Kaspers (157,300), Jim Earnest (142,600), David James (135,000), Greg Raymer (101,400), defending champion Johnnie Craig (95,000), Dan Heimiller (22,500), Bill Klein (23,300), Cliff Josephy (19,900) and Joe Somerville (7,000).
The players will return for Day 2 on Saturday at 11 a.m.