Hallaert Bags Big on Day 1A in Event #68: $1,111 The Little One for One Drop; Utley Leads
A total of 947 entries were accumulated on Day 1A of Event #68: $1,111 The Little One for One Drop No-Limit Hold'em at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. After ten one-hour levels, just 194 found a bag and moved on to Day 2 along with the $852,300 prize pool that was generated during their flight.
Leading the way from Day 1a is John Utley with 159,800 and close behind is Spain's Alberto Rodriguez with a stack of 141,400. Belgium's own Kenny Hallaert rounds out the top three with 131,900 in chips.
Ukraine's Beka Iordanishvili (127,300) also bagged big and middle of the day chip leader Richard Kirsch is sitting fifth overall in the chip counts with 125,000. Two bracelet winners in Phil Laak (118,300) and Calvin Anderson (117,300) are amongst the top ten stacks.
Some other notables making it through to Day 2 include Robert Damelian (112,400), David Peters (95,300), Erik Cajelais (93,500), Sorel Mizzi (82,900), Martin Finger (73,800), David Laka (65,100), Samuel Phillips (48,500), 888 Ambassador Dominik Nitsche (29,400), Scott Bohlman (25,700), and David "ODB" Baker (25,600).
Among those who failed to survive the day were John Hesp, Jonathan Little, Mike Sexton, Aaron Massey, Mike Leah, Matthew Wilkins, Sandeep Vasudevan, Kitty Kuo, Chris Ferguson, Dan Shak, Jon Turner, and Leo Margets.
Day 1A was the first of three flights that will be moving on, the next two flights will be held on July 8 & 9 and all players to make it through will come back on Tuesday, July 10, for Day 2. The second day will restart at 12pm local time and the total prize pool and payouts will be announced before play begins.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be bringing you full coverage of this and every other WSOP event this summer.