To put this into perspective, this all began in 1970 with seven high-stakes rounders settling down in Binions Horseshoe to play what would become known as the World Series. These days we can “give or take a few hundred” fully eight hours in to the contest. Our conservative margin of error would swallow all the tournaments in the first 25-odd years of competition.
As has also been well documented, these monstrous fields are largely the result of the PokerStars and the Chris Moneymaker effect, and as we mentioned previously, 2,008 PokerStars qualifiers will be spread across the four day ones. It seemed like a good idea towards the end of the day to take a trip round the room and meet a few of them, the first introduction on what will hopefully become a long story en route to a Moneymaker or Raymer-esque cash.
All the following are among the 711 who survived deep into day 1A.
Wesley Ismay, South Dakota, 65,000
Bjorn Enberg, Boden, Sweden, 28,000
Steven Jacobs, Philadelphia, 45,000
Joe Pecoraro, New York, 44,000
Sandy Smith, Jackson, Tennessee, 16,500
Kellen Hunter, Minot, North Dakota, 85,000
Kip Jones, Lousiana, 28,000
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