Thanks to an enormous Day 1C, the 2017 World Series of Poker Main Event is the third-biggest in the WSOP's 48-year history.
4,262 players bought into the third and final starting flight, combining with Days 1A and 1B to put the total tally of entries at 7,221.
That number means a total prize pool of over $67 million and a first-place prize of $8.15 million.
1,084 players will get paid with the prizes starting at an even $15,000. Each player who makes the final table will be guaranteed at least $1 million.
The WSOP Main Event hasn't seen bigger numbers since 2010 when Jon Duhamelbecame the first Canadian world champion. That was second only to the historic 2006 Main Event won by Jamie Gold.
By the end of Day 1C French player Jerome Brion had amassed the largest stack at almost a quarter of a million chips. Here are the unofficial top 10 chip counts, courtesy of WSOP.com:
- Jerome Brion – 248,000
- Tyson Mao – 242,800
- Michael Pedley – 240,900
- Rudy Sawa – 238,600
- Carl Carodenuto – 237,800
- Jason Mann – 236,000
- Eric Nathan – 228,500
- Daniel Barry – 224,500
- David Toneman – 221,300
- Adam Levy – 220,700
A number of former Main Event champs played today including Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson and Joe Cada. 1998 world champion Scotty Nguyen was also in the field.
He was reportedly playing a drinking game where the person sitting in a the seat corresponding to the first card on the flop would have to buy the next round of drinks when it arrived.
Nguyen is infamous for drinking at the table, behavior highlighted at the final table of the 2008 $50k Poker Players Championship that he won.
All four players advanced to Day 2 as did Daniel Negreanu, but he moved on with just 26,000.
Quads Win, But Not Always
Actor and perennial Main Event competitor James Woods went broke with the nut full house, losing to quads.
But, as we saw today, quads aren't always guaranteed to be the winning hand.
WSOP bracelet winner and 2009 Cardplayer Player of the year Eric Baldwin was in a hand holding pocket deuces and flopped a set. He ended up rivering quads and faced an all-in raise from Laurence Grondin.
Baldwin called and his opponent tabled a royal flush to take a big bite out of Baldwin's stack.
A long list of other big names also failed to make it through the day including Ari Engel, Johnny Lodden, John Racener, Mark Newhouse, John Duthie, Dan Heimiller, Blair Hinkle and John Juanda.
Tomorrow will see the first of two Day 2s, combining the fields from Days 1A and 1B. On Wednesday the survivors of today's starting flight will return to fight for a spot on Day 3.
