WSOP 2012 Day 1A: Main Event Winners And Losers

Day 1 of the $10,000 buy-in WSOP Main Event has three starting days in order to accommodate the huge field of players drawn to the world’s most prestigious poker tournament.
Saturday saw Day 1a kick-off with a total of 1.066 entrants, up 19% on last year’s figure of 897 although it should be noted that last year had four Day 1 flights. In another departure from other years, players progressing from Days 1a, 1b and 1c will play in separate fields on Day 2.
At the beginning of Day 1a, 1.066 players each started with a a 30,000 stack but by the end of play just 657 competitors remained with many notable pros falling at the first hurdle.
Losers
The biggest surprise exit on Day 1a was the elimination of Phil Hellmuth who after 14.5 hours of sleep switched from Day 1c at the last minute and made a subdued entrance into the Main Event, unlike the theatrics of previous years. Unfortunately for him, the end of the night saw his top pair run into the bottom set of Michael Tureniec and just like that Hellmuth was out.
As well as Phil Hellmuth, other notable names hitting the rail on Day 1a included Matt Glantz, Chris Klodnicki, Kathy Leibert, Greg Mueller, Frank Kassela, Allen Bari, Eric Froelich and Joe Hachem.
Winners
Out of those players  making it through to Day 2, William John finished the chip leader on a massive 266,700 stack, followed a way back by Daniel Streliz (165,125) and Dane Lomas (164,125).
Amongst the notable names thriving on the day was Eric Baldwin (123,150), Faraz Jaka (115,775), Filippo Candio (85,000) and JJ Lui (78,800), while Mike Sexton (15,200) and David Williams (9,100) also made it through, albeit with small stacks.
In addition, last year’s Champion Pius Heinz, 23, finished with 40,000 chips after being down to 10k before making flush over flush in one hand and winning with pocket queens against ace-queen in another. As Heinz explains:
“My day 1 was extremely rocky, pretty rollercoaster-like. I didn’t win a pot for the first six hours pretty much ..I ended the day with 40,000 and I couldn’t be more happy about it, because I thought I was just going to bust right after dinner.”
Players from Day 1a will now have a two day break, while the action from Day 1b gets underway later today.