The World Poker Tour is back in action for 2009 and PokerListings.com is on location in the Dirty South as the Southern Poker Championship gets under way from the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Miss.

This four-day, $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em main event kicked off at noon Wednesday in the Beau's massive gaming facility on the Gulf Coast.

Although technically a new event for WPT Season 7, the tournament replaces Season 6's WPT Gulf Coast Poker Championship, which took place in September 2008 and saw PokerListings.com fave Bill Edler capture a $747,615 first prize.

As a result of the WPT's pulling Borgata's Winter Poker Open from its schedule, the Southern Poker Championship functions as the only WPT event in January, typically a busy month for pokering.

You'd therefore expect a substantial turnout, but in fact only 283 souls paid the cost to play with the big boys in Biloxi this week, leaving Tournament Director Johnny Grooms to end the registration period like a carney barker hawking the Layne Flack Experience to any well-heeled undecideds he could find.

That 283-player field meant the prize pool wound up juuuuuust shy of offering $1 million to the winner - at least until the good people at the Beau decided that in the interests of good P.R. they'd stand to benefit from kicking in the missing $24k to top off the prizes.

Knows his way around Biloxi.

As such, our $2,662,747 total prize pool will award $1,000,000 in pretax American dollars to the champion, with 26 other finalists also making bank for their efforts. Anyone lucky enough to earn a seat at the six-handed final table will walk with six figures, but even the smallest fishes in the payout pond will be able to swim off with at least $13,186.

As has been the story with most WPT events of late, the field was small but saturated with a multitude of the game's very best. There were no easy tables on Wednesday, but some were harder than most, including that which featured Devin Porter, Peter Feldman, Allen Kessler, Matt Stout, Barry Greenstein and David Singer sitting side by side by side by etc.

Also making the trek to the Beau were former WPT champs Edler, Scott Clements, Pensacola's Jonathan Little, Gavin Smith, David Pham, Erick Lindgren, Brandon Cantu, Kevin Saul and Nick Schulman, as well as erstwhile November Niner Scott Montgomery, EPT4 Copenhagen champ Tim Vance and controversial WSOP Main Event darling Tiffany Michelle.

Undeeblievable.

With all of those big names, it was Curt Kohlberg who jumped out to the early lead, padding his stack with the remains of a number of unfortunate souls in the tournament's first few levels.

Among his victims were Saul and Shaun Deeb, the latter the victim of a hellacious beat that saw Kohlberg run a wild bluff with 5♣ 3♣ against Deeb's pocket nines, only to river a straight to send the Waffle Crusher back to the iron. Kohlberg would cool off, however, and ended the day 26th in chips.

Also making waves on Day 1 was Tiffany "Hot Chips" Michelle, who spent the day in position on not only Lindgren but Cantu and Hoyt Corkins besides. Michelle would take Corkins for a number of reasonable pots throughout the day, only to throw all of her progress to the wind in a disastrous hand against Cantu as the day neared its end.

In the hand, Cantu raised on the button and Michelle defended her big blind with a reraise. Undaunted, Cantu four-bet and Michelle opted simply to flat-call and then shove the flop, which came 7♣ 7♦ 5♦. Cantu insta-called for his tournament life, turning up 7♥ 6♦ for trips, while Michelle was exposed as a fraud with K-J offsuit.

How dare you!

The board bricked out and Cantu doubled, all but crippling Michelle, who spent the last of the level loudly criticizing Cantu's decision-making process while the WPT Season 6 Bay 101 champ stacked his nearly $90k in loot.

That $90k wouldn't be near enough to get him to the top of the chip leaderboard, however. That lofty plateau is occupied by one Esther Taylor, whose $139,475 puts her just a smidge above Jacquelyn Scott's $138,800. Among the rest of the chip leaders with 175 players remaining are Hevad Khan, Bryan Devonshire and Jamie "Chronic420" Rosen.

Action is slated to resume at noon Central Time from the Beau and play down from 175 to the money, i.e. 27. That means it's gonna be a long one. Grooms suggested an over/under of 3:30 a.m. would be reasonable, but despite the prospects of a grueling day a couple folks didn't want to play more than five levels on Wednesday. They'll be punished for it on Thursday.

We'll be punished right along with them, and if you tune in to PokerListings.com we'll see that you're suitably punished as well. But only if you ask us nicely.