It’s been one of the most controversial days in WSOP history, but it’s also been the most prolific Main Event days in Australian poker history. Against the backdrop of hundreds of players missing out on a Main Event seat after day 1D was declared a lockout (which didn’t apply for a chosen few), scores of Aussies took their place in Main Event, with a massive list off 33 reaching day 2B.



Tony Hachem made up for his late start to finish on 89,350

It was Sydney’s Dean Hopkins who led the way on 90,250 followed PokerStars Team Australia Pro Tony Hachem on 89,350, Dane Coltman (87,350), Charlie Elias (83,525), Jonathan Karamalikis (71,975), Majed Haddad (69,225), Shane Brown (68,375), Bill Jordanou (58,000), Pande Nikolovski (52,575), Tim Horan (50,375), Billy Seri (47,475), Dave Fox (46,950), Emma Grace (46,825), George Manolas (45,800), Geoff Menz (42,150), Charles Caris (41,575), Craig Ivey (40,150), James Carey (38,450), Queensland’s Nick Nicolaou (36,800), Sevag Yedelian (36,800), Mark “MJ” James (36,775), Jonathan Muir (35,350), Ross Parsonson (33,125), Joey Lawrence (32,800), Sean Keeton (29,525), Rob Campbell (27,050), Jonathan Wertheim (24,800), Matthew Pearson (22,750), Jai Kemp (21,300), Kevin Nguyen (14,300), Leno Icaca (9450), Andrew Barter (9425) and Parry Lee (3700).

Where those players are going to be seated on day 2B is anyone’s guess as 2923 players will be returning on Wednesday. Today’s field of 2809 was declared a sell-out – tables in the car park.

Aussies who didn’t make through included Savvas and Lou Zenonos, Michael Pedley, Chris Chronis, Julian Powell, Robert Bechara and Martin Martinez.

Official chip count (day 1D)

1 Troy Weber (West Terre Haute, IN) 353,000
2 Tyson Marks (Missoula, MT) 196,500
3 Stephen Costello (East Longmeadow, MA) 192,000
4 Mads Wissing (Copenhagen, Denmark) 185,750
5 Joseph Sanders (Lima, Peru) 175,800
6 Mikael Ay (Gothenburg, Sweden) 173,900
7 Carter King (Columbia, SC) 170,000
8 Mark Weil (Cincinnati, OH) 168,575
9 Paul Wolfe (West Palm Beach, FL) 163,000
10 Alessandro Pastura (Guidizzolo, Italy) 160,900

Payout structure for the 2009 WSOP Main Event

1st $8,546,435
2nd $5,182,601
3rd $3,479,485
4th $2,502,787
5th $1,953,395
6th $1,587,133
7th $1,404,002
8th $1,300,228
9th $1,263,602
10-12th $896,730
13-15th $633,022
16-18th $500,557
19-27th $352,832
28-36th $253,941
37-45th $178,857
46-54th $138,568
55-63rd $108,047
64-72nd $90,344
73-81st $68,979
82-90th $57,991
91-99th $47,003
100-162nd $40,288
163-225th $36,626
226-288th $32,963
289-360th $29,911
361-432nd $27,469
433-504th $25,027
505-576th $23,196
577-648th $21,365

Posted by Sean Callander, 2.55am, 7/7/09

It’s dinnertime on day 1D after a fiery start to the final opening day flight of the 2009 WSOP Main Event. We can reveal that the total Main Event field is 6494 players, down from 6844 last year but a solid number (also considering the lockout of at least 500 players earlier today). The winner, to again be decided in November, will take home $8,548,435.

Some of the bigger stacks belong to Blair Hinkle (120,000), Chad Brown (105,000), Nicolas Levi (103,000), Adam Schoenfeld (97,200) and Dutch Boyd (85,000).

It’s been a mixed start to the day for the Aussies, with Jimmy Siu and Michael Pedley among the first players eliminated. However, Will Mitchell (40,000), Jai Kemp (35,000), Julius Colman (27,000), Jonathan Karamalikis (26,000) and Jason Gray (23,000) have all reached the dinner break.

A true gentleman of Aussie poker, Julius Colman

Tony Hachem has also appeared in today’s field, telling www.worldseriesofpoker.com that he was forced to wait in a line for several hours to pay his entry fee after pre-registering. Thanks to a set of 10s against pocket aces, the PokerStars Team Australia Pro is up to 55,000. Great news for Tony and Team Hachem.

The list of eliminations so far today includes Alec Torelli, Jeff Madsen, Phil Galfond, Mark Seif, Peter Feldman, Eric Baldwin, Roy Winston, Tom Hall, Huck Seed, Lyle Berman, Scott Montgomery and Dario Minieri.

Huck Seed: here, but not for long

In good news, a new record has been established for the number of players receiving a massage on a single table at the same time: six. In bad news, former WWE women’s champion and general glamour Torrie Wilson has been eliminated. Let her rebuy!

More on the lockout saga – the list of players who are said to have missed out today includes World Poker association chief “Captain” Tom Franklin, Mickey Appleman (ending a run of 30 successive WSOP main Event starts), T.J. Cloutier, Layne Flack, Brandon Adams and “Hollywood” Dave Stann.

1996 WSOP champ Huck Seed is said to have jumped to the head of the line today after winning a Main Event seat as part of his prize package in the NBC National Heads-up Championship.

One of the biggest stories in WSOP history is brewing in the corridors of the Rio Hotel and Casino with between 500 and 600 players said to have been locked out of today’s sellout 1D field.

There have been angry scenes in the tournament registration area and in the hallways outside the tournament rooms as furious players desperately try to find a way into the 2009 WSOP Main Event.

A meeting was held between Harrah’s officials and the angry mob at 2.30pm local time, where WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack apologised but said there was no way any players would be added to the field, and that an additional day one flight was not an option.

Angry players charge off to meet Harrah's officials after being locked out of day 1D

Pollack also denied claims that some of higher-profile players locked out of the Main Event were provided special treatment. We clearly saw an angry 1996 world champion Huck Seed remonstrating with officials earlier today. Seed is now seated in the Main Event. It’s also alleged that Phil Ivey and Erick Lindgren were allowed to take their place in the tournament after other players had been told no seats were available.

One player in particular summed up the mood of the meeting when he said he’d driven 19 hours only to miss out on a seat.

Australia’s Tony Hachem also missed out on a seat, saying players hadn’t been informed of the potential lockout and said he was “in shock, devastated and emotional” at missing his spot in the Main Event. “It was bad planning to hold the event over the July 4 weekend,” Hachem said.

Somehow, more than 6000 other players managed to find their way to a Main Event seat over the past four days and registration have been opened for months, so Harrah’s can’t be totally blamed for this situation. We haven’t heard the last of this issue, by a long shot.

Posted by Sean Callander, 4.40pm, 6/7/09 – special thanks to Stephen Doig for additional reporting

If you cover enough hands at enough poker tournaments, you’re sympathy for players’ bad beat stories withers away to almost nothing (unless it happen to us, of course).

However, we’d be happy to provide a shoulder for the opponent of Michael Alezrah, who just watched his aces cracked in the most sensational of circumstances.

Alezrah was all-in with 10d-10c and found himself against Ah-Ac. The flop fell Jc-8c-6h, leaving the aces comfortably ahead. Then the Ac came on the turn, leaving Alezrah with two cards to catch. Yep, down came the 7c on the river to give him a straight flush. And they say online poker is supposedly rigged!

But not all the drama unfolds on the felt. Every player who makes the journey to Las Vegas comes with hopes and aspirations. Perhaps no player, nor story, is quite as compelling as that of 55-year-old Kent Senter, from Cape May, New Jersey.

He is married and is the father of four children. Senter worked at Lowe’s until recently, when he was diagnosed with a fatal disease called Multiple Myleoma. Senter was told he has only six months to live.  Senter’s wife, Patty, knew that his dream was to play in the WSOP.

She arranged to have him play in the Main Event and for the first time, Kent Senter took his seat amid thousands of other hopefuls yesterday. Now that Senter’s dream to enter and compete in the WSOP has come true, but will continue to be a player to watch in the days ahead. Senter ended day 1C with 50,125 in chips, and is taking a well-deserved break before returning on Wednesday for day 2B.

Speaking of inspirational stories, blind player Hal Lubarsky is playing today

Then, there is the other end of the spectrum. A ruckus broke out early today at orange table 90 after a group of players cut last-minute sponsorship deals after hearing that they’d be accompanying Phil Ivey to the feature table at the start of the day. Uh-uh, Ivey elected to stay buried away out of the spotlight, much to the chagrin of his tablemates.

Players have just returned from their first break, and we’re sad to report that Perth’s Michael Pedley, who cashed in the 2008 Main Event, isn’t among them. After making the last-minute decision to fly halfway around the world, Pedley’s WSOP Main Event lasted less than two hours after his flopped set of threes were overtaken by an opponent’s runner-runner flush.

Posted by Sean Callander, 4pm, 6/7/09

Welcome to our day 1D coverage of the 2009 WSOP Main Event, the final of the four day one flights. Clearly this will be the biggest field of the past four days, and we expect the numbers to push towards, and hopefully past, a total of 6000.

Previous days have attracted 1116 and 873 players, meaning 3685 players have already played in the Main Event. But we’re at capacity today, which means at least 2500 players.

The honour of providing the order to “shuffle up and deal” went to ESPN commentators Lon McEachern (currently meandering through the Rio on a pair of crutches) and Norman Chad.

The faces of ESPN's poker coverage, Lon McEachern and Norman Chad

Big names in the Amazon, Brasilia and Miranda ballrooms today include Phil Ivey, Erick Lindgren, Jennifer Harman, last year’s runner-up Ivan Demidov, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, former NBA player John Salley, Vanessa Rousso, Scott Clements, Glen Chorny, Josh Arieh, actor Marlon Wayans, Alec Torelli, Dario Minieri, snooker champ Steve Davis, JC Tran, Michael Mizrachi, David Benefield, Vivek Rajkumar, Michael Binger, Clonie Gowen, Shannon Elizabeth, Chad Brown plus a pair of our Bluff US colleagues, publisher Eric Morris and managing editor Matt Parvis.

There’s a huge contingent of Aussies in action thanks to the arrival of 23 players representing the Australian Poker League. Those players are Paul Georges, Jay Hook, Geoff Menz, Charlie Elias, Jonathan Wertheim, Leno Icaca, Terry Adams, Parry Lee, Emma Grace, Pande Nikolovski, Trevor Allan, Natt Armstrong, Danny Taylor, Majed Haddad, Dean Hopkins, Dave Fox, Alain Velmonte, Regan Lake, Shane Brown, Ross Parsonson, Steve Tolios and Michael Soumelidis.

Keep an eye on here for the latest news on the TeamAPL players today.

Other Aussies playing today include WA’s Michael Pedley, Chris Chronis, Jimmy Siu and Rob Campbell (we're sure there's many more)

Yesterday WSOP tournament director Jack Effel has announced that days 1C and 1D will be playing five levels, as will players on day 2A while day 2b will play only four levels. Then when the field combines on Day 3, everyone will be on Level 10.

So, like day 1C, the structure for today’s play is five levels with a 90-minute dinner break:

Level 1: 50/100
Level 2: 100/200
Level 3: 150/300
Level 4: 150/300 (ante 25)
Level 5: 200/400 (ante 50) 

• Remember, you can keep up to date with the latest happening from the 2009 World Series of Poker by following twitter.com/bluffaussie.

Posted by Sean Callander, 1.10pm, 6/7/09