Imsirovic Bags Another Chip Lead in Event #5: 50th Annual High Roller - $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em
It was a relatively quick day for the 2019 World Series of Poker high rollers today in Event #5: 50th Annual High Roller - $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em. Only eight one-hour levels were played on the first of four days and that's all it took for the red-hot Ali Imsirovic to build a healthy chip lead.
Imsirovic, who already finished in second place in Event #2: $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Turbo Bounty, picked things up where they left off yesterday. In just the second level of the day, Imsirovic already claimed three victims, two of which were Ryan Laplante and Chance Kornuth, to accumulate a 4x starting stack of 1.2 million. At the end of the day, Imsirovic was able to amass a stack of 1,549,000 chips, good for over 150 big blinds when Day 2 resumes.
While still in the early stages of his poker career, Imsirovic is starting to make a big name for himself and will not be hiding under the radar anymore. The American resident has earned himself over $5 million in career tournament earnings, most of which have come in the past 18 months and specifically in high roller tournaments.
While Imsirovic appeared to be the star of the show once again, each table was filled with notable faces that attracted plenty of railbirds to the ropes surrounding the tables. This event is the second largest buy-in scheduled for the 2019 WSOP and with it comes the task of battling some of the greats in the game. The crowd also had their sights set on the face of poker Daniel Negreanu who also enjoyed a successful day on the felt.
Negreanu bagged up an impressive 861,000 chips in which he nabbed most of them from tablemate Andrew Robl. Negreanu picked off a bluff from Robl and then finished him off in a coin flip just before the last break of the night. Some of the other big stacks heading into Day 2 include Elio Fox (1,185,000), Ben Heath (1,180,000), Barry Hutter (1,081,000), Dmitry Yurasov (1,000,000), and Chance Kornuth (999,000) who rallied back on his second bullet.
This event allows players the option of a single re-entry but unfortunately for Alex Foxen that wasn't enough. The #1 ranked player burned through both of his bullets and has been officially eliminated from the tournament. Others like Jeremy Ausmus, Dan Shak, Andre Akkari, Laplante, and Robl will have the opportunity to re-enter on Day 2 if they choose. Late registration will remain open for another four levels and each player will be given a fresh stack of 300,000 chips.
The 52 remaining players will return at 2 p.m. PST inside the Amazon Room at the Rio Convention Center for Day 2 action. There will be 10 levels on the schedule for tomorrow with the blinds resuming at 5,000/10,000 and a 10,000 big blind ante. Each player will be given six new time extensions as there is a 30-second shot clock in play to keep the pace of play flowing.
Follow along with the PokerNews live reporting team for all of the live updates throughout this event and more from the 2019 World Series of Poker.