WSOP 2014 Day 1A: Main Event Winners And Losers

The $10,000 WSOP Main Event always boasts the biggest field of the whole Las Vegas showcase tournament series, and this year the WSOP has guaranteed a minimum of $10 million for the eventual winner.
In order to accommodate the massive numbers of players attracted to the event three starting days are open to competitors. Historically, the first of the opening flights is the smallest whilst the last day often sees the largest turn out of hopefuls and top name pros.
Day 1A got underway on Saturday, with 771 players starting out on 30,000 chip stacks but by the end of roughly 13 hours of play just 505 competitors still remained with many big name pros falling by the wayside.
Losers
One of the most surprising exits on Day 1 was Jason Mercier, who did not have the best start to the event and was down to 9,800 chips before recovering his starting stack. His joy was short lived, though, and a couple hours later he tweeted
“Busted the main event… Got coolered in 3 bet pot. Now what?”
In addition to Jason Mercier, other notable pros out of the competition on Day 1a included Phil Laak, Jeff Gross, Jean-Robert Bellande, David Chiu, Bruno Fitoussi, and Trishelle Cannatella.
Winners
Of those players progressing through to Day 2, Sweden’s Martin Jacobson finished atop the chip count on huge 200,100 stack, followed by Aaron Wilt (157,650) and Seamus Cahill (150,000).
Amongst the noted pros finishing well on Day 1a was 2-times Main Event champion Johnny Chan  (106,000), Layne Flack (75,450), Ryan Riess (70,225), Chris Moneymaker (69,850), Antonio Esfandiari (59,775) and Annette Obrestad (54,625).
Billionaire businessman Bill Perkins also experienced a swingy day and his chip stack dropped below 5,000 at one point before he managed to recover to end the day with 25,000 in chips.