WSOP 2014 Event #1 Casino Employees and Event #2 Mixed Max Launched

On 27 May, the first two events of the 45th WSOP launched: players of the $500 Casino Employees NLHE are already in the money, while Vanessa Selbst leads the remaining 60 in the $25,000 Mixed Max NLHE, featuring some of the biggest stars.

WSOP Event #1 $500 Casino Employees NLHE saw 876 entrants and a prize pool of $394,200. The tournament was kicked off WSOP director Ty Stewart, whose speech culminated in a money cannon being fired, covering the floor with $10,000 cash in $1 notes.

Eventually, only 51 players remained after 11 levels of play, led by Californian Corey Emery with 164,900 in chips.

As far as Event #2 $25,000 Mixed Max NLHE is concerned, the third biggest buy-in tournament in this year’s WSOP schedule, right after the $1,000,000 Big One and the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship, had 131 participants enter and offers a prize pool of $3,111,250. In the mixed max structure, players sit down to 9-handed tables on Day 1, move to 6-max tables on Day 2, play 4-handed on Day 3 and the last four players play a heads-up tournament on Day 4.

The buy-in level brought about a field worthy of a highlight event: among other notables players, Chino Rheem, Marvin Rettenmaier, Joe Cada, Sorel Mizzi, Paul Volpe, Dan Smith, Greg Merson, Phil Galfond, Scott Seiver, Jason Somerville, Phil Laak, Dan Shak, Tom Marchese, Faraz Jaka, Eugene Katchalov, Daniel Negreanu, Ashton Griffin, Jason Mercier, Matt Marafioti, Nick Schulman, Sam Trickett, Phil Hellmuth, JC Tran, Calvin Anderson, Stephen Chidwick, Daniel Cates, Michael Mizrachi and Vanessa Selbst entered.

First out was Rettenmaier: on Level 2 (25/150/300), he called Ryan Fee’s all-in on the T 5 4 2 2 board. Fee showed pocket aces, Rettenmaier mucked and walked away from the table.

The biggest comeback of the day was shown off by Selbst, who first dropped to only 40,000 in chips, losing to Ryan D'Angelo’s tens on Level 4 (50/250/500), and then to Aaron Jones’ queens two levels later. On Level 7 (100/500/1,000), however, she turned the tide: Selbst 3-bet to 11,200 on Jennifer Tilly’s raise to 2,400, the latter 4-bet to 35,000 and Selbst moved all-in. Tilly called.

Tilly: K J
Selbst: T T

Board: 8 4 7 Q A

Tilly’s outs never came and Selbst doubled up to 106,000.

On Level 10 (300/1,000/2,000), half an hour before the end of the day, she also grabbed the overall lead: Ravi Raghavan raised from the Hijack, Jake Schindler 3-net to 14,000 from the CO and Selbst 4-bet to 31,500 from the BB. Raghavan folded, Schindler called and the flop came J J 8. Selbst bet 24,500, Schindler called and they saw the T on the turn. Selbst check-called Schindler’s all-in for 160,000 and tabled a quad of jacks. The river was irrelevant and Schindler was out with his T 9.

A total of 60 players qualified for Day 2, led by Selbst (562,800) and featuring a range of the most renowned pros around.

The Top 10 is as follows:

1st: Vanessa Selbst – 562,800
2nd: Brian Rast – 557,400
3rd: Michael Mizrachi – 399,300
4th: Jason Mo – 393,000
5th: Fabrice Touil – 327,600
6th: Daniel Cates – 317,000
7th: Ravi Raghavan – 275,000
8th: John Juanda – 264,800
9th: Stephen Chidwick – 260,600
10th: Aaron Jones – 235,800

More chip counts of interest:

11th: David Vamplew – 225,600
14th: Calvin Anderson – 211,600
17th: Phil Ivey – 203,100
20th: Phil Hellmuth – 181,700
22nd: Justin Bonomo – 178,500
23rd: Sam Trickett – 160,000
24th: David Benefield – 154,200
25th: Richard Lyndaker – 148,900
26th: Joseph Cheong – 146,700
27th: Ryan Fee – 145,900
28th: Nick Schulman – 137,600
29th: Matt Marafioti – 135,600
31st: Alec Torelli – 126,100
33rd: Jason Mercier – 117,800
34th: Jeff Gross – 111,100
39th: Amichai Barer – 100,600
43rd: Keven Stammen – 88,500
44th: Ashton Griffin – 87,700
45th: Galen Hall – 85,100
47th: Noah Schwartz – 81,000
52nd: Timothy West – 61,700
53rd: Daniel Negreanu – 61,300
54th: Adam Bilzerian – 60,800
55th: Andrew Lichtenberger – 51,100
56th: Faraz Jaka – 45,700
57th: Olivier Busquet – 44,400
58th: Eugene Katchalov – 41,600

Payout structure:

1st: $871,148
2nd: $538,308
3-4th: $290,622
5-6th: $171,461
7-8th: $112,752
9-10th: $85,342
11-12th: $72,617
13-14th: $63,158
15-16th: $54.945