When you are paid to watch the greatest poker players in the world then some of that action must stick like dog dirt on the bottom of an unfortunate shoe. That’s certainly the case for one Chad Holloway. The PokerNews blogger arrived in Las Vegas with quill in hand ready to turn ‘The player on the button raised and the big blind folded,’ into ten different forms of prose that Shelley would have been proud of. But before he got stuck into his first 14-hour shift, he decided to spend two days wages on a ticket for Event #1: $500 Casino Employee No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE). As it turned out it was a good investment. It was what a young lad called Charlie would have called a Golden Ticket.
Holloway arrived in Vegas to write about people winning WSOP gold bracelets, and this morning he is reading about how he won his very own. The second day of action started with a field of 55-players and Holloway found himself heads-up against the overnight chip leader, Michael Trivett – 90-minutes later and Holloway was the champ. To put things into perspective, the $84,915 that Holloway won is not far off what he earns in a year.
Event 2: $5,000 NLHE – Eight Handed is into its third day of action and Rafal Michalowski leads the final 28-players with 632,000 chips. The American leads a field that still oozes strength with the likes of David Vamplew (452k), Day 1 Chip Leader Tom Marchese (446k), Griffin Benger (265k), Dan Kelly (224k) and David Sands (172k) still vying for contention.
One man missing from that list is the most decorated Olympian of all-time: Mr. Michael Phelps. If you were reading yesterday you would know that Phelps was playing in his first-ever WSOP event, and was loving life despite just squeezing through to Day Two with just below starting stack. Phelps was eliminated in unfortunate circumstances after four-bet shoving ace-queen into the ace-six of David Diaz, who went on to hit trips to send Phelps to the rail.
The Millionaire Maker is also making decent headway. Event 3: $1,000 NLHE created a monster field of 1,828-Day 1A players and Scott Seiver ended the day as the chip leader with 65,000 chips. 321 players ended the day and they will merge with the 339 players who managed to sneak passed a 1,336 field that turned up on Day 1B. That’s a combined field of 3,164 players. Cor Blimey Governor!
When the second day of action starts Jeff Payne will be the man at the top with a Day 1B chip lead worth 99,425 chips. Leo Wolpert (45,375), David Singer (27,500), Tony Dunst (26,150) and Josh Arieh (25,950) a few of the more prominent players to get through the Day 1B cull.
