It was an exciting start to the tournament with 43 players getting in on the action and numerous rebuys throughout the day. The prize pool soared to well over €2.5 million on Day 1 alone.
The official prize pool won’t be released until tomorrow because registration will remain open for one more hour on Day 2. For the time being there are still 37 players looking to roll their way into a massive payoff.
Richard Yong (408,200), David Benefield (375,100), Mike Watson (370,900), Tony G (350,000) and Daniel Negreanu (320,200) are all in the top 10 chip counts.
Juanda paid dearly to get the chip lead firing three €50k bullets in the re-entry contest.
As expected the event drew a shooting gallery of pros including Tom Dwan, Mike Watson, Tony G, Erik Seidel, Justin Bonomo, Philip Gruissem, Thomas Wahlroos, Roger Hairabedian, Sam Trickett and Andrew Lichtenberger.
Surprisingly Phil Ivey and Antonio Esfandiari were both MIA but they still have a chance to buy into the touranment tomorrow.
Macau High Rollers Arrive in Style
There was also a large number of non-pros in the field, however, led by famed Malaysian businessmen Richard Yong, Paul Phua and Winfred Yu who played the WSOP Big One for One Drop $1 million buy-in tournament this summer.
Interestingly Phua, Yong and Yu are coming off their biggest win ever as they finished first, second and third respectively in the recent Aspinalls £100,000 Super High Roller in London.
The atmosphere in the tournament room was surprisingly light with the businessmen enjoying some champagne and shouting across the tables at each other throughout the day.
At one point Juanda went to rebuy and instead Yong just tossed him the cash across the table.
There were only a handful of eliminations on Day 1. Both Eugene Katchalov and Greg Merson busted and decided not to rebuy.
Action resumes at 4 p.m. CET tomorrow.
Here are the top 10 chip counts at the end of play according to WSOP.com:
1. John Juanda – 538,000 2. Richard Yong – 408,200 3. David Benefield – 375,100 4. Mike Watson – 370,900 5. Jean-Noel Thorel – 355,000 6. Tony G – 350,000 7. Tobias Reinkemeier – 348,000 8. Daniel Negreanu – 320,000 9. Erik Seidel – 293,800 10. Paul Newey – 291,500Visit www.pokerlistings.com