World Poker Challenge Day One

The World Poker Challenge is in their first day in Reno, Nevada.  This is a $7,500 buy in tournament but since it didn't make the season VII schedule it only attracted 261 players compared to last years turn out of 425 players.  This has made the prize pool significantly shorter with the first place prize falling a little short of $500,000 dollars.

The day started out with a bang as many of the more well known poker professionals who registered late were all seated with each other at the far end of the room and the local satellite winners were all keeping company on the other side. 

While there were many complaints about the seating situation some decided to look at it optimistically, Mike Matusow said that he was happy to have John Phan directly on his right but later on Phan caught his card and sent Matusow home.

Greg Mueller was warned at one point that if his complaints continued he would be thrown out of the game but a little later on he went all in for $55,000 and George Panagakis won the hand and took him out so there were no more complaints at the tables from him.

At the end of the day 75 players bagged and tagged their chips and went to their rooms to rest up for another day of poker.  Phil Ivey currently has the chip lead but this tournament is far from over.  Play will begin again tomorrow at noon and will continue until there are only 27 players left to sit at the final three tables.