After a successful debut in 2007, the Second Annual Caesars Palace Classic, which started on Tuesday, surprised everyone by drawing a huge field which surpassed expectations.
The inaugural tournament last year drew a very respectable 287 players and featured a final table of top professionals that included Bodog poker pro Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, Scott Fischman, Kido Pham, and eventual champion David Singer, a member of Team Full Tilt Poker. While pleased with the turnout, Caesars still had to dip into its own pocket to meet the guaranteed $1 million first place prize. For the 2008 edition of the tournament, the casino had several ideas for making the tournament even better than year one.
It is estimated that, through mega and single-table satellites as well as freerolls for frequent players in the Caesars card room, nearly 100 seats were won by players prior to the start of the Championship Event. Each winner of a preliminary tournament on the Caesars Palace Classic schedule was also given a seat. With nearly $1 million in the pot already, other poker professionals flocked to take a shot at the $10,000 Championship Event.
Once arriving at the starting gates, players were also shocked to see what Caesars had done with their opening chip stacks. While two, three or even four times the traditional 10,000 chip stack has become the norm in tournament poker, Caesars officials decided to make the Classic’s Championship Event a true deep-stack tournament by starting everyone out with 100,000 chips. This allowed for all players to exercise their strategic poker muscles in the early going. Blind levels began at 100-200 and increased every hour.
Registration for the tournament closed after Level 2 and drew in 311 players, an increase of 24, or 8%, from last year. The prize pool of just under $3 million didn’t quite make it to the $1 million guarantee for first place, but once again Caesars stepped up and picked up the overlay to guarantee $1 million to the winner.
The field was laden with some of the top professionals in the tournament poker world, but many of them won’t be around when Day Two action begins today. Defending champion Singer was one of those eliminated, along with such notables as “Ace on the River” author Barry Greenstein, 2008 WSOPE champion John Juanda, Dutch Boyd, Juan Carlos Mortensen, Erik Seidel, and Team PokerStars Pro icon Vanessa Rousso. In total, 145 players were eliminated on Day One, which was quite surprising given the deep stacks that Caesars had provided.
When play begins at Noon Pacific Time on Wednesday, the 166 survivors from Day One will be chasing 2007 World Series of Poker bracelet winner Ryan Young, who amassed a chip stack of 685,700 by the end of play, but has many top pros in pursuit of him. Sabyl Cohen-Landrum, whose deep run at the 2006 WSOP Main Event announced her arrival onto the tournament poker scene, is only 60,000 chips behind Young in second place. Others who should make a strong run in the tournament include England’s “Gentleman” John Gale, Robert Mizrachi, Layne Flack, Men “The Master” Nguyen and 2007 WSOP Main Event final table member Hevad “Rain” Khan, who are all in the top 50 in chips.
At the start of action on Wednesday, the blinds will be at 1,500/3,000 with a 300 chip ante and the plans are to play down to the final table. This should be a grueling test for those players remaining. The final 27 players left standing will earn at least their buy-in back for the tournament. The next two days of action at the Caesars Palace Classic Championship Event should be exciting and Poker News Daily will have all the recaps of the action in Las Vegas.
