It’s been a while since we witnessed a World Series of Poker Main Event starting day with such a low attendance figure, as just 897 players decided to participate on Day 1a of the tournament. According to PokerNews.com, they were told by WSOP officials that Day 1a makes up roughly 17% of the overall field size, which puts the 2011 WSOP on pace for 5,276 total entries –which would be the smallest total since 2004 when 2,576 players entered the tournament.

Of the 897 original entrants, 556 were able to bag up their remaining chips at the end of the night and will now have a few days off, ready to return for Day 2a on July 11, 2011 where they will be combined with the field from Day 1c.

Here is a look at the top 10 chip counts at the end of Day 1a of the WSOP Main Event:

1. Fred Berger – 209,500

2. Shane Sigsbee – 182,600

3. Kyle Burnside – 159,050

4. Cedric Annen – 155,400

5. Michael Bena – 150,350

6. Lynne Mitchnick – 145,675

7. Juan Perez – 143,425

8. David Diaz – 139,150

9. Chris MacFarland – 135,350

10. Phillipp Gruissem – 133,050

Notable players who survived Day 1a include Wesley Pantling, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Vladimir Geshkenbein, Raymond Rahme, Olivier Busquet, Luke Staudenmaier, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Soi Nguyen, Lex Veldhuis, Sami Kelopuro, Chris Bjorin, Filippo Candio, Barry Shulman, Steven van Zadelhoff, Annette Obrestad, Mickey Appleman, John Cernuto, Jani Sointula, and Vince van Patten, all of who finished the day over the 50,000 chip mark.

Results courtesy of wsop.com

Tags: Annette Obrestad, Attendance Figure, Barry Shulman, Bena, Chris Macfarland, David Diaz, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Juan Perez, Low Attendance, Main Event 1, Mickey Appleman, Poker Main Event, Raymond Rahme, Sigsbee, Sointula, Staudenmaier, Veldhuis, World Series of Poker, World Series of Poker Main Event, WSOP Main Event

This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2011 at 10:31 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.