Just as estimated the 2010 PCA will break all records from previous years, as Day1A garnered a total of 668 players at the Atlantis Resort Casino. The chip lead is currently held by UK PokerStars qualifier Wayne Bentley, who managed to amass a chip stack that exceeds three hundred and twenty nine thousand which is just short of almost eleven times the starting stack. Bentley’s closest followers are Amnon Filippi with 220,000, Kevin Saul with 170,000 and Eric Froelich with 165,000.
Some of the PokerStars Pros had a good day at the tables, including: Dennis Phillips, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Dario Minieri, Daniel Negreanu and Ivan Demidov, among others. But not all PokerStars Pros ran good; some will have enough time to enter the other 48 tournaments on schedule as well as enjoy the beautiful beach and other attractions that the Atlantis Resort has to offer. Some of the players that won’t be returning for the second day of the main event are: Chris Moneymaker, Jason Marcier, Ruben Visser, Greg Raymer, Joep van den Bijgaart and Sandra Naujoks among others.
But day 1A brought a lot of excitement and even controversy at one table. The table in question had PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu involved in the hand the captured the attention of many players around him. In the hand that caused the big fuss, Negreanu and Maurizio Lucatelli got tangled and the board ran Ah 10d 2h Ac 5c. In the last betting round after the river card, Lucatelli bet 4K and Negreanu re-raised to 14K; Lucatelli then just called and turned his cards, but was told by the dealer to put them face down on the table. By that time Negreanu claimed that he saw his cards and that he held Ace-five. A tournament official made his way to the table and Negreanu told him what happened. After several minutes of chatter the official said that Lucatelli would not be penalized and that he could only call the bet from Negreanu, which he did and won the hand with a full house.
Day 1B will start today and the field is expected to be even bigger than yesterday. There will be a lot of poker pros at the tables as well as poker fans who want to take a shot at the multi-million dollar prize pool.
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