Below you'll find the updated and official chip counts for the first flight of the main event. Two hundred one people started the day. One hundred sixteen finished and will advance to Saturday. Flight two begins tomorrow at noon. An estimated 225 players will play in that flight, putting the final number of entrants at 426.

Player Name --Count

John Smith--68,100
Nicholas Matala--43,300
Seung Woo Yoo--41,775
Dan Alspach--40,950
Peter Feldman--40,575
Allen Cunnningham--39,700
Maros Lechman--38,475
Carl Hertel--36,975
Greg Raymer--36,950
Mike Linhardt--35,775
Alex Balandin--35,100
Robert Mizrachi--33,950
David Bach--33,450
Josh Schlen--32,800
Edward Moncada--32,675
Maruice Hawkins--30,325
Andreus Hagen--29,225
David Williams--28,325
Anders Henrisson--28,225
Jeff Hubberman--25,625
Mark Smyrski--25,575
Kevin Keller --25,475
Marco Frigers--25,450
Shae Drobushervich--25,300
Cliff Josephy--25,025
Paul Angel--24,425
Chris Moneymaker--24,200
Annand "Victor" Ramdin--24,150
Christian Kruel--23,825
Brad Kulley--23,700
Joel Hawood--23,125
Amnon Filippi--23,100
Alan White--22,850
Daniel Larsson--22,225
Terrence Chan--21,675
Peter Giordano--21,350
Paul Snead--20,875
Jimmy Dowda--20,400
KL Hamdan--20,225
Jonathan Rice--19,975
Stephen Zolotow--18,675
Hoyt Corkins--18,325
Tom Shaneberger--17,850
Terry Winfield--17,750
Erick Lindgren--17,450
Harley Hall--17,400
Cecila Reyes--17,350
Sven Ruemckev--17,300
Nick Adamakis--16,225
Stephen Tanner--15,825
Kid Tran--15,425
Kristopher Doyle--15,375
Brandon Wong--15,275
George Heym--15,250
Ammon Brown--15,200
Steve Waldron--14,675
Wanda Ely--14,450
Doug Timmer--14,300
Ben Sprengers--14,175
Jason Su--13,725
Ted Lawson--13,625
Doron Rubin--13,600
Ed Tonnillier--13,525
Jeffrey Henry--13,500
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi--13,075
Layman Thompson--13,025
Ian Kalman--12,650
Stephen Jones--12,450
Kathy Liebert--12,125
Brandon Moran--11,950
Kristen Davis--11,925
George Keener--11,650
Yakov Hirsch--11,625
Derek Morris--11,575
Ryan Bambrough--11,350
Bruce Cohen--11,275
Mike McClain--11,225
Travis Erdman--11,125
J Andrew Campo Bassc--10,875
Alex Brenes--10,825
Fabrice Soulier--10,775
J.C. Tran--10,725
Patrick Walsh--10,600
Jamie Farr--10,525
Jean-Francois Guay--10,275
Kasper Pitakakangas--10,225
Klaus Byztek--10,125
Michael Lacey--9,325
Mike Kenney--9,150
Vincent Lawrence--8,925
Francois Safieddine--8,625
Glen Bean--8,600
Gary Thiret--8,425
Martin Fiejo--8,425
Brian Decatur--7,575
Dewey Tomko--7,475
Millie Shiu--7,350
John Juanda--7,250
Robert Perry--6,900
David Hank--6,650
Frank Jiminez--6,425
Jon Rasool--6,300
David Wheeler--6,275
T.J. Bachio--6,175
Kevin McCarthy--5,975
Alexandra Vuong--5,650
Jim Bucci--5,525
Arthur Azen--5,525
Ralph Chambers--5,525
Bill Elder--5,350
Don Lambertus--5,275
Gabriel Thaler--5,025
Mark Gregorich--4,975
Daniel Elizondo--4,950
Ali Eslami--4,550
Robert Hatton--3,850

Finally, though, they've finished up the first day of the main event.

I know everybody wants chip counts and I'm doing my best. As often as the chip stacks shift hands, an hour by hour update is impractical at this level. Once we thin out the field, we'll be more regular in our updates. Until then, please be patient.

I'm going to get to work on some stories and such in a bit. For now, I've have some estimated, unofficial chip counts for the first flight. We don't have counts in for everybody. They're verifying the count and that could take hours.

For now, here are your unofficial Top 15 leaders after the first flight.
Estimates based on my count...likely to change once the official count is in

• John Smith $63,000
• Nicholas M. $43, 300
• Seung Yoo (New Jersey) $41,000
• Dan Alspach--broomcorn (LaHoya, CA) $40,900
• Peter Feldman (?) $40,000
• Greg Raymer (Mystic, CN) $36,000
• Mike Linhardt (?) $35,000
• Alex R. $35,000
• Robert (Hollywood, FL) $33,900
• Chris Moneymaker (Tennessee) $32,000
• Josh--sdouble (He's one of the leaders, but I don't have an exact amount for him)
• David Bach (Athens, GA) $31,000
• Maurice H. $30,000
• Andreas H. $28,200
• David Williams (Dallas, TX) $28,000
• Jeff Hubberman $25,000

There are still more than 100 people remaining in the first flight. For those people interested in big names: Lindgren, Liebert, Moneymaker, Raymer, Williams, Juanda, and Tomko are all still in. Mortensen and McEvoy have busted out for sure. I haven't seen Mercier in quite a while and she'd been running on a shortstack all day. I suspect she's gone, but I'll check.

Remember how I said everybody was being very, very careful today? Well, that care has resulted in a lot of canceled dinner reservations. Even after working through the dinner break, more than 130 players still remain out of the 201 who started the day.

Moments ago, tournament director Mike Ward was forced to make a decision. With only ten minutes remaining in the last scheduled level, he realized that he wasn't going to bust enough people to make the tournament fit when they combine the flights on Saturday. So, that meant one of two things: Play eleven-handed on Saturday or...play another level tonight.

Although there was some dissention in the ranks, the decision came down.

We're playing an hour of level six before we break the Main Event for the night.

My workspace sits just off the tournament area, close enough that I can be to the action in ten seconds, far enough away that I can concentrate. As I sat down to put up a little photo gallery of some of the lesser-knowns here, I heard a scream through the door. It was the first really loud noise I'd heard all day.

Not being a cat, I have little fear of curiosity and as such went a-runnin'. As I entered the tournament area, I was saddened to see that one of my photo gallery subjects was standing, taking off his hat, and starting to get a little loudish. Scrap that one, I thought.

But I kept walking anyway. You never know what will happen.


John Rice, Cumberland, Maryland

John Rice (pictured above) was all-in pre-flop. He got exactly what he wanted. A caller.

John held aces. His opponent held kings.

The screaming I heard came by way of the flop. The opponent had spiked a king on the flop, giving him a set. And you thought that stuff only happened online.

John was reduced to two very ugly outs.

I made it to the table in the middle of the room as the river fell.

An ace.

And you thought that stuff only happened online.

So, John just doubled up and maintains his position in the lesser-knowns photo spread. Maybe by the end of the day he will be known at a greater level.

I know that a lot of you have specific requests on who I should cover and seek out. The big problem is that there are 200 people in the room right now and none of them are wearing nametags. I'm meeting folks as fast as I can. I'm sure as the field winnows itself, it will be eaiser to pick people out.

In terms of action, we're now in the third level of the main event. We're down to about 180 players in the first flight. We've already lost one of the well-known pros. Carlos Mortensen was apparently getting very few hands this afternoon and read a a lesser-known for a bluff and called him down with ace-high. Turns out the lesser-known was running a bluff. The problem for Carlos was that the lesser known also held ace-high and outkicked Carlos' AJ with AQ. Not too long after that, Carlos went heads-up with Chris Moneymaker. Moneymaker held QT, Mortensen held Q9. The flop brought two queens. The board didn't help Mortensen any more and he was bounced in the second level.

And you thought that stuff only happened online.

Main Event Seat-Winners

• Brandon Jones
• Thomas Wilson
• Roy Schiller
• David Saraf
• Scott Drill
• John Jurantovac
• Jeff Hegedus
• Dennis Schrijvers
• Joey Varatanian

$8000 Winners (players who won but already had a seat)

• Andreas Hagen
• Eric Brenes
• David Miller
• Luis Santoni
• Francois Safieddine
• Jeff Stoff
• Annand Ramdin
• Cy Kastelic

Bubble-ish Boy, aka $5620 winner

• Robert Spino

There will be one mre Super-Sat tonight for the Main Event. I don't expect it to be as large as last nights, but it still stands to be fun, as it will be the last chance for someone to win a seat into the Main Event.

Jon Rasool, from Toronto, has a bit of an issue. Out of 200 other players he could've ended up next to today, he found Greg Raymer on his left.

I sidled up (something I'm becoming increasingly good at)and got down on a knee next to Jon. I raised my eyebrows, nodded toward Raymer, and asked the obvious question.

"So, whatta you think of that?"

Jon smiled, "It's going to be interesting." As I started to tell him how obvious that was, he smiled again and said, "I hope to take him out."

That's my boy.

Today the first flight of 201 players took a while to check in. They'll play through five levels today starting with 10,000 in tournament chips, ending tonight with $150/$300 blinds and a $50 ante. The levels, for now, are lasting 75 minutes.

We're just beginning Level 2, and only a few people have busted out.

As you might expect, it's a careful room full of players. Ahead of them lies several more days of play if they play well and catch lucky.

As such, only big hands are getting shown down and the players are sitting back and waiting for cards.

While the above-mentioned tablemate of Greg Raymer may have shifted in a seat a little bit when he sat down, he could feel fortunate not to be seated at the three power tables (tables with two or more pros) in the room.

Currently Table 15 holds Carlos Mortensen and Chris Moneymaker. Table 6 is home to Tom McEvoy and David Williams. And Table 14, my-oh-my, is three-strong, with Isabelle Mercier, Steve Zolotow, and Mike McClain.

I'm trying to keep an eye on more than 20 tables at once for some good stories, but the reserved naturre of the players right now is making that tough. I suspect as the day wears on, we'll see more stories coming out of the tables.

No time at the moment for a thoughtful, romantic post about the islands, the beauty, or, for that matter, the therapeutic qualities of falling asleep at 6:06am to the sound of the ocean waves.

As you're likely aware, this tournament will begin with two flights, one today and one tomorrow. The first flight is getting ready to start as I type.

I know some of you back home are dying to have the winners from last night's super-sat and an updated list of bust-outs and chip counts from today.

All I can offer right now is this: As soon as I have them, you'll have them.

Our support staff tells me that they won't be tracking bust-out order until day two or three. As for everything else, I'm working on some method by which I can get results up here as quickly as possible. I expect we'll have something worked out soon.

Until then, we're about to get this thing underway.

Here's to no bad beats...

After a couple hours of play, the tournament directors announced that of the 224 players, 17 would get $8000 seats into the main event. The 18th finisher would get somewhere in the neighborhood of $5600. Nineteenth place got what my dad always used to call, affectionately, squat.

I was keenly interested in how the man who dubbed himself The Suck-Out King would finish.

With eighty players left, I wandered through the tournament area and found the King getting shortstacked. It looked like he had around 3600 chips left. The blinds sat at 300/600, so he knew as well of the rest of us that it was fold or push in time. On the button, he made his move, re-raising all-in. The original raiser had the King covered, but not by much.

The King's opponent considered his move for a long time. I half expected the King to call the clock on the guy. At that point, I likely would have. After what seemed like a very, very long time, the guy called and flipped over pocket tens. With a sigh of relief, the King flipped his queens (the Hilton Sisters, as my fellow poker bloggers like to call them).

Now, I didn't know this and you may not have either. While karma is a concept embraced more in the Far East, it is apparently not lost here in the islands.

The flop came as rags and the King turned to his buddies with a sigh of relief. He turned back around when then table let loose a scream. The turn was a ten.

And the Suck-Out King gave up his crown.

It was that kind of brutal night here in the first-ever Bahamian poker room.

Pro player Evelyn Ng busted out on the first hand of the super satellite and reportedly didn't rebuy because, like me, she's no big fan of rebuy tournaments. I saw her later in a $800 single-table satellite. I walked up as she went all-in with AT vs. KK. The flop came with a ten, the turn an ace. As the crowd started to murmur about her two pair, her opponent spiked a king on the river for a set. She walked away gracefully as the assembled crowd exploded.

Yep, that kind of night here. I have unlimited space, but not unlimited time. If I were limitless, I'd just sit here and write up the bad beats I've witnessed in the past six hours.

Alas, the action goes on.

When the action got down to three tables, the floor had to establish a rail. Since there was no rail, the guys encircled the tables with empty chairs, upon which the railbirds climbed for a better view.

The action remained brutal. Sighs, screams, and the occasional blue word spat from the tables every few minutes. Until, finally, after hours and hours of play...we reached the point at which even strong men start to get a little quivery.

You know it as well as I. They call it...

The bubble.



The big board indicated it as clear as a Bahamian day. Nineteen players left. The next guy out (and it was only guys that remained) got squat.

It became immediately evident that one table was going to be the table to watch. There were a few very short stacks.

A first it seemed when a big ace was up against QT that the shortest stack at the table would survive into the money. But the QT rivered a sraight and play resumed.

Finally, agonizingly, the nice guy just couldn't hold on anymore.

Bubble=Squat

Frankly, that's where things got a little odd. One guy desperately wanted a seat in the tournament. He also happened to be the shortest stack at the table and was facing the second bubble, which meant a decent payday, but no seat.

What made the table strange was that a few guys at his table just...how do I put this...they just didn't give a damn. They didn't care about the seat. However, no one could agree to a good deal that fit within the payout structure. For a few minutes, it seemed that several of the people in the tournament were arguing about who could just give up. Since nobody could agree on who could give up, those who didn't care started pushing in with anything. The sad result always left the shortstacked guy who wanted a seat in last place.

Finally, he met his ineveitable end.

The rest of the guys won seats (or cash, if they'd already won a seat.) I don't have their names now, but should in a few hours.

It's now past 5am and the Main Event begins in seven hours.

At some point, we all need to sleep...

With all this talk of chip-slinging and card playing, some folks might have been left with the misimpression that this thing they call poker is commonplace here in the islands. In fact, it is not. As I've stated a couple of times before this post, never before tonight has a legal hand of poker been dealt in the Bahamas.

Just after 11:15 tonight, though, I heard my name come over the intercom. I made my way through the crowd and learned it was about to happen: the first-ever hand of live, cash-game poker in the Bahamas.

It was a $20/$40 hold'em game in the very front of the room.

Unlike the super-sat which was already in progress, players had to buy their checks directly from the Atlantis casino. Under the watchful eye of casino management and the gaming commission, a chip runner handed out the racks of red.

The players, most of whom looked to be pretty experienced in the ways of poker, didn't seem to notice the gravity of what was about to happen. See, this was a first. No one had ever done what they were about to do on this island.

I took a perch on a nearby chair and sweated a guy in the eight-seat who was about to have a very bad first hand. He glanced up at me and I said in a quiet voice, "I'll move as soon as this hand is over." He gave me a look that said it was no big deal, but I can't imagine having my stumbly frame towering over him made him feel very good. Still, I readied my camera and fired off a few test shots. Posterity and all, you understand.

After a fairly long chip-buying process, Steve, the dealer shuffled like he would on any other day and dealt out the cards. The two-seat bet out, the five-seat raised, the eight-seat re-raised. Before it was said and done, it was capped and we saw a fairly ugly flop. It's only redeeming quality was that it held a couple of hearts.

As it turned out, the flop wasn't as ugly as I thought, because the five and eight seats went to war, eventually scaring off the two-seat and piling a stack of redbirds high enough that I thought Steve the Dealer might get caught in an avalanche. The turn was a blank, but the betting continued.

Somebody whispered to me that the eight-seat was holding KK.

"This isn't going to turn out well," I thought.

No doubt, with that board and that kind of pre-flop action, the kings had to be ahead, unless the five-seat was holding aces. I won't say what made me think this, but I was pretty sure that wasn't the case.

The river was the two of hearts and I resigned myself to the fact that this hand had just gone the way of the flush.

Sure enough...

The five-seat was holding AT of hearts. He raked a pile of chips that was as red as his tabled hand. And he cheered. I think it was less of "I won" cheer, than a "let's get this party started" cheer. Or something like that.

As it turned out, the winner was a guy named Jonas (aka Jona2 on PokerStars). He'd just traveled 20 hours from Denmark.

And just like that it was over. Steve dealt another hand and live poker in the Bahamas continued unabated.

So far, the room here has been running very smoothly under the direction of some veteran managers and dealers. Hopefully, the Bahamian folks like what they see.

How could they not?

Before we get on to a fun story for the night, it bears mentioning that the poker room opened for the first time tonight. And by opened, I mean...sheesh, that's a lot of people.

I knew something was afoot when I wandered back from the cocktail party and found the lobby of the ballroom already full of people. While they might not admit it, they were tapping their feet and wringing their hands like a bunch of people who'd been locked out of a poker room for three days. Of course, that's exactly what they were.

PokerStars at one time considered cappping the $200 Super Satellite for the main event at 120 people. It soon became clear that a lot more people than that wanted to play.

The line to buy in stretched around the room. Within an hour, 224 people had ponied up $200 a piece for a shot at a seat in the Main Event.

The room was full of folks, both well-known and unknown faces.
Bad beats in the Bahamas
With thanks to Meg for the headline

As Mike Ward called out "Shuffle up and deal" I walked around and watched the first couple hands of the tournament. The first hand I saw was AK vs. AA. For once, AA held up and my faith in humanity found itself restored.

For all of one minute.

Three tables away, I heard a slight commotion, so I shuffled over to find AA vs KK vs 99. All three players were all-in preflop.

"Give me the nine," a young guy in the two seat said a little louder than I expected.

The dealer dealt out the flop: 78T.

I almost couldn't watch. But it's like a car wreck on the interstate. And the squealing tires and crashing metal came just after the young guy screamed, "Give me the suck-out!"

He made his straight on the turn and nobody watched the river for a couple of reasons. First, it was irrelevant. Second, the young guy was now standing, screaming to his buddies across the room, and in a moment I might not soon forget, declared himself at 100 decibels, "THE SUCK-OUT KING!"

The aces handled the outburst well. The kings took some umbrage, however. That conversation is better left in the poker room, however, for there was still a lot of poker to be played.

Like unlucky windchimes, the word "rebuy" tinkled across the room more times than one man could count.

As I type, the super is entering its third hour. One hundred and twenty-three players remain. After the entry-fees, 316 rebuys, and 190 add-ons, the prize pool sits precariously close to $146,000 before a slight reduction for the dealer toke. That means, the final 17 players tonight will win seats into the Main Event. I suspect that many of them already have seats, which means they'll get paid out in cash.

Oh, and if you were wondering, The Suck-Out King is still in contention.