The opening flight saw 3,713 players register, and Flight B added another 2,630 entrants to the tally for Event #6, a $1,500 No limit Holdem tournament dubbed the “millionaire Maker” for its first-place $1,000,000 guarantee. With a total of 6,343 entrants the event became the largest non-Main Event tournament in the history of the World Series of Poker, bettering the previous record set in 2009, when Steve Sung bested a field of 6,012 players in a $1k buy-in NLHE event.

Not only did the Millionaire Maker best the attendance record, but the $8.5 million prize-pool is the largest non-Main Event non-One Drop prize-pool in WSOP history. By exceeding expectations by over 1,000 entries the tournament’s $1,000,000 guarantee was surpassed, and the winner of the Millionaire Maker will pocket nearly $1.2 million, with everyone at the final table receiving a six-figure payout.

By the end of the second flight of the day the tournament field had been reduced to just 862 players, but with only 648 players making the money there is still a long way to go and even some of the current chip-leaders may fall by the wayside before the money-bubble bursts.

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading into Sunday’s Day 2:

1. Ryan Welch — 68,450

2. Champie Douglas — 54,575

3. Teddy Djmal — 52,000

4. Jim Burns — 42,050

5. Rupert Elder — 40,950

6. Jordan Zynda — 36,250

7. Blake Whittington — 36,000

8. Jeff Smith — 35,800

9. Jeremy J Halaska — 34,575

10. Gary Friedlander — 33,850

Other notable chip-stacks: Aaron Massey (28,000), Blair Hinkle (26,000), Todd Witteles (25,075), Allen Kessler (18,000), and Tripp Kirk (16,450), all of whom are in the Top 50 on the leader-board. Other big names farther down the leader-board include Shawn Buchanan, Kenna James, Randy Lew, Carlos Mortensen, Xuan Liu, Maria Ho, Steve O’Dwyer, TJ Cloutier, Erick Lindgren, and a whole slew of other superstars who will have less than the starting stack of 4,500 chips going into Day 2.

And here is a look at the final table payouts for the tournament:

* 1st place: $1,198,780

* 2nd place: $741,903

* 3rd place: $534,506

* 4th place: $400,408

* 5th place: $302,104

* 6th place: $229,575

* 7th place: $175,714

* 8th place: $135,467

* 9th place: $105,154

Day 2 of the Millionaire Maker will see the money bubble popped fairly early on, and from there we should see the field reduced dramatically, although there is still a lot of poker to go over the course of this three-day tournament –that being said, my guess is a fourth will be needed to declare a winner.

Resources: www.wsop.com, www.wikipedia.org

 

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