WSOP Event #51: All Seats Taken On Day 1

It's all fun and games until somebody takes your seat. Team PokerStrategy.com was ready to roll in another event but the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Event #51 was capped at 2,790 players and amazingly, every seat was taken down to the last one. Due to this inconvenience, Trader, Allanon and Nazgul will try their luck in the Triple Chance No Limit Hold'em Event #52, hopefully a mass of players will not swarm the tables there and they will get a chance to play.

Yes, in Las Vegas people take seats before the music stops playing and with the field cap reached, everything was set for the Event #51 to begin. Despite the invasion of amateurs and other less known players, many top pros managed to sneak into the field, such as Justin Young, Neil Channing, Men Nguyen, Hevad Khan, Michael Binger, Isaac Haxton, Scott Seiver and many more. Matt Brady and Shaun Deeb were even fortunate enough to find themselves at the same starting table.

The tournament rules can be quite useful and a perfect example would be one of the early hands of the day when two players moved all-in on a jack-high flop. The first player showed pocket aces and his opponent mucked his cards. However, the dealer retrieved his cards out of the pile and turned over two kings. The player with aces was furious at this, saying the cards can not be pulled out. The floor person was called and it was ruled that in an all-in both hands must be shown, thus the kings stayed out of the muck until the hand was played out. The turn came a blank and the river came a king, thus giving the pot to the player who threw away the hand which brought him victory in the end.

The play was still in the early stages and another interesting situation occurred. At one of the tables, the action was folded around to the player on the button who made a raise. The small blind folded and the big blind pushed his cards forward, saying "....raise." The dealer claimed he heard "raise" and the big blind argued he said "good raise" to the button. The floor was called over and after talking with the dealer and two other people at the table that also heard just "raise", the player in the big blind was forced to raise the minimum. The button then shoved all-in for 4,000 and the big blind went into the tank for several minutes. Eventually, he folded his hand.

JonathanLittle (pictured left) didn't have problems with folding pocket kings or anything for that matter, he was actually doing quite good in the beginning. He moved all-in in a three-way pot with pocket queens against A-K and K-J. The board didn't help his opponents and he climbed up to 18,000 in chips. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it through the day, same as Hevad Khan, Kathy Liebert, Mark Seif and many more. Shaun Deeb had over 20,000 at one point, but he also had to join the list of the players who won't be returning for the second play day.

By the end of the night, many notables were already gone, but Day 2 will not be missing top pros. Amnon Filippi will return with a stack of 77,700 in chips, Nen Nguyen with 71,200 and with chip leader Christopher Bonita holding 131,700, all cards are still open and it remains to be seen who of the remaining 349 players will make it into Day 3.

Here are top 10 chip stacks after Day 1:

World Series Of Poker Event #51 Standings
Rank	Name	Chips
1st	Christopher Bonita	131,700
2nd	Ryan Price	130,000
3rd	Cody Slaubaugh	125,900
4th	Phong Huynh	123,300
5th	Steven Van Zadelhoff	118,000
6th	Kevin Armstrong	117,700
7th	Jason Helder	117,700
8th	Hon Le	115,900
9th	Kenneth Shelton	105,600
10th	Jason Potter	100,100