World Poker Tour, Mirage Poker Showdown, Day one
Three hundred seventeen players packed into the tournament area at the Mirage, all in search of some TV time, and the top prize of $1.1 million dollars. The circuit is becoming fairly predictable, meaning if there were 317 faces in this room, you had seen 200 of them before. All of the people you would expect in this event were in, and at the beginning of the day you saw all the faces you have come to expect from these $10,000 buy in events, which have become commonplace. The payouts for this event are...
1st - $1,128,278 - plus a $25,000 seat in the 2006 WPT Championship
2nd - $579,386
3rd - $289,693
4th - $182,964
5th - $137,223
6th - $106,729
7th - $76,235
8th - $60,988
9th - $48,790
10th - 12th $36,593
13th - 15th $30,494
16th - 18th $24,395
19th - 27th $18,296
That established, it was time to play some poker, and that meant people had to go. Despite the starting chips being 20,000, and the blinds being fairly modest, we saw a lot of eliminations in day one. It seemed there was a lot of gamble in the room, and as such, players were departing at a pretty rapid pace.
Prominent day one exits were numerous. Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, Dan Harrington, David Chiu, Scotty Nguyen, Lyle Berman, Paul Darden, Freddy Deeb, Barry Greenstein, Chip Jett, Tuan Le, Erick Lindgren, Eli Elizera, Mike Matusow, Michael 'Grinder' Mizrachi, and Carlos Mortensen are all players who are currently out of chips, and they can go home now.
At the end of the day, the field was cut in half, and 156 players will start today, in search of the top prize. Current Player of the Year leader John Phan (aka the hottest guy in Poker) is the chip leader, and both Shulmans aren't far behind. Below are some selected chip counts, which are approximate until official ones are released. See you tomorrow.
John Phan 153,000
Barry Shulman 139,000
Jeff Shulman 137,000
Toto Leonidas 105,000
David "The Dragon" Pham 98,000
Hasan Habib 90,000
Robert 'Brother of Grinder' Mizrachi 77,000
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson 63,000
Young Phan 53,000
Thor Hansen 51,000
Ted Forrest 51,000
Jennifer Tilly 48,000
Phil Laak 46,000
Erik Seidel 43,000
David Sklansky 41,000
David Williams 41,000
Gavin Smith 40,000
Scott Fischman 38,500
Kathy Liebert 36,000
Ed Note: Instead of reading about this great tournament action, play in a tournament today at Paradise Poker
