166 players sat down at the Rio poker tables on Wednesday to play in the $111,111 buy-in One Drop High Roller tournament. With a near $5 million first-place prize the winner of the tournament will walk off with the 19th largest prize ever awarded in a World Series of Poker event, and the second largest first place prize ever awarded at the WSOP for a non-Main Event –trailing only last year’s Big One for One Drop tournament.

The 166 entries was also a new record for a poker tournament with a buy-in of $100,000 or more, besting the record set at the recently concluded GuanDong Asia Millions, where 71 players (along with another 54 entries) took part in the $130k buy-in tournament. The total prize-pool for the tournament is $17,891,148, and here is a look at the payout structure:

* 1st — $4,830,619

* 2nd — $2,985,495

* 3rd — $1,965,163

* 4th — $1,433,438

* 5th — $1,066,491

* 6th — $807,427

* 7th — $621,180

* 8th — $485,029

* 9th -10th — $384,122

* 11th -12th — $308,622

* 13th -14th — $251,549

* 15th -16th — $208,968

* 17th -24th — $173,723

The entry list for the event reads like a who’s who of the poker world, like Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Sam Trickett, ElkY, John Juanda, Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Johnny Chan, Vanessa Selbst, and Jason Mercier. But scattered throughout the field were a number of poker-playing businessmen like David Einhorn, Roger Sippl, Bill Perkins, Bill Klein, Farshad Fardad, Lawrence Greenberg, Richard Yong, and Kathy Lehne.

By the end of Day 1 the field had been whittled down to just 108 players, but nobody has jumped out to a commanding lead, and with the blinds heading into the 3k/6k level, even some of the short-stacks are a mere double-up away from climbing right back into the mix on Day 2.

If Day 1 was played at a slow, methodical, pace you can expect the early stages of Day 2 to be just the opposite, with players looking for quick double-ups in order to make a run at the prize-money –which should be hit during the latter stages of today’s action.

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip-counts heading into Day 2 of the three-day tournament:

1. Brandon Steven — 1,398,000

2. Tobias Reinkemeier — 1,225,000

3. Dan Shak — 999,000

4. Jason Mo — 975,000

5. Chris Lee — 906,000

6. Ben Lamb — 855,000

7. Matt Glantz — 854,000

8. Don Nguyen — 847,000

9. Bobby Baldwin — 839,000

10. Farshad Fardad — 833,000

*Resources: www.wsop.com

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