WSOP Main Event: Day 1c Recap

“Yeah, that’s why I picked Saturday.”

That was the hypothesis of two players at the World Series of Poker Main Event on Day 1c, and while they might have been right about the 9-5ers, they were way off the mark when it comes to the pros.

Three past Main Event champions and a long list of live and online pros were among a huge field of 1,928 players to take their seats on Saturday for Day 1c, the largest of any of the Day 1 flights thus far.

Huck Seed made an early exit from the Main Event while the other two World Champions playing today, Chris Moneymaker and Joe Hachem, both faired better and will be returning on Day 2.

“I got chips pretty early and didn’t do anything stupid to give them back,” Moneymaker said. “I had a pretty easy table. Everybody pretty much stayed out of my way and let me do what I wanted to do.” The 2003 Main Event Champ ended the day with just under 70,000 and will have plenty of room to play when he returns on Wednesday.

The ESPN feature table for Day 1c featured Mike Matusow and unlike last year when he busted early and left quietly, “The Mouth” survived the day and undoubtedly provided the cameras with some color along the way.

David Singer, Evelyn Ng, Brad Booth, Nenad Medic and Jeff Madsen all ended the day in the top portion of the leaderboard, while pros who weren’t lucky enough to survive the day include Mike Gracz, Max Pescatori, Gavin Griffin, Daniel Alaei, Justin Bonomo, J.C. Tran, Jeff Lisandro, T.J. Cloutier, Tony G and Marcel Luske.

Chad Batista, Vivek Rajkumar, Amit Makhija and Philip Collins were all eliminated early on Day 1c, but the online contingent is still well represented as David Baker, Brian Rast, Sorel Mizzi, Dave Benefield, Andrew Robl and Brian Townsend all ended the day with above average stacks.

A familiar face from the 2006 Main Event, Dmitri Nobles, got off to another fast start by chipping up to almost triple his starting stack in the first few hours. Sooner than it did in 2006, however, things fell apart for Nobles and he was eliminated before the dinner break by big stack Michael Martin.

As Day 1c wound down, Henning Granstad emerged as the dominant chip leader, bagging up 225,000 when the clock stopped for the night.