With all of the tournaments currently running around the world, day 1A of the World Poker Tour’s annual World Poker Open attracted 117 players. Facing competition from the Aussie Millions, Borgata preliminaries and even the World Series of Poker circuit event across the street, the Gold Strike decided to split its starting day in two, to give all the players who may be traveling time to make the trip to Tunica, Mississippi.
Despite the low turnout, the rail was packed from start to finish with locals trying to catch a glimpse of their favorite pros and perhaps an autograph or two. While players like David “The Dragon” Pham, Dutch Boyd, Freddy Deeb, David “The Devilfish” Ulliot, Humberto Brenes, Jaime Gold, Nam Le, and J.C. Tran got their fair share of attention, the majority of the crowd clamored to watch Daniel Negreanu try to make his annual visit to the final table.
Negreanu has historically done very well in Tunica. In 2005, he finished third in this event when it was held at the Horseshoe. He followed that up in 2006 with a win in the WSOP circuit event at the Grand Casino. Last year, he took second in this event here at the Gold Strike. As a result of his success, he was definitely the fan-favorite, not only with the spectators, but with many of the local players as well.
Negreanu took a few hits early on, but later he more than doubled up in a three-way all-in pot, where his A-K out-flopped Q-10 and pocket fours. Things just didn’t go his way after that though, and with about 45 minutes left in the day’s action, he was eliminated.
He wasn’t the only big name to hit the rail, however, as Mark Seif, Ted Lawson, Gavin Griffin, Gold, Tran, and Devilfish all failed to survive.
Questionable play could be found everywhere and time after time moves out of the ordinary left many players scratching their heads. Early on in level one, Pham raised to 300 on the cutoff and Wei Kai Chang called on the button. The big blind looked over and then decided to move all in for over 20,000. Pham and Chang looked at each other and started laughing as they mucked their hands. The big blind then explained that he didn’t want them to catch two pair on his pocket aces.
In the end 64 players hung on and they will join tomorrow’s remaining field on Tuesday to play down to the money. Day 1B is projected to attract a larger field than today, putting the total field size close to 300.
Here are the top 10 chip counts. Click here for the full list.
1. Matt “Cub” Culberson – 98,000
2. Antonio Salorio – 90,700
3. Matt Sterling – 86,800
4. Johnny Price – 86,500
5. Ken Christopher – 84,876
6. Chris Ingram – 81,250
7. Jose Rosenkrantz – 82,025
8. Chris Reslock – 74,750
9. William Payne – 73,150
10. Aaron Lasater – 71,600
