Event #1: Casino Employees No-Limit Hold'em ($500 buy-in)
898 players (a larger field than expected) signed up for Event #1: Casino Employees No-Limit Hold'em and, after 11 levels and over 14 hours of play, only 55 made it through to Day 2. The chip leader is Michael Trivett with 133,900 chips, putting him about 30k ahead of Sean Small's second-place stack of 103,700. Play will continue at 1 p.m. local time tomorrow in the Amazon Room at the Rio, Las Vegas. The winner will take home $84,915 and a WSOP bracelet!
Event #2: No-Limit Hold'em / Eight Handed ($5,000 buy-in)
Day 1 of this event kicked off yesterday and saw a 481 players battle it out for eight levels of play. 232 players remained at the end of the day and the chip leader is Tom Marchese, who bagged up 153,975 chips. Only a few other players accumulated six-figures stacks, including David "Doc" Sands (110,825) and Scott Baumstein (111,100).
In addition to the players already named above, poker stars such as Antonio Esfandiari, Chris Moorman, Vanessa Selbst and Barry Greenstein will bring healthy stacks to Day 2. Here are some big names that, unfortunately, were eliminated during Day 1: Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Jason Mercier, Erick Lindgren, Jonathan Duhamel and Marvin Rettenmarier.