Home / Poker News May 2009 / Cesar Chavez leads WSOP Event #1 – the Casino Employees $500
Cesar Chavez leads WSOP Event #1 – the Casino Employees $500
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2009-05-28 18:36
For all those who’ve been living in a cave or under a rock for the past few weeks: the WSOP is finally underway and the first event, the $500 Casino Employees has already sent the first 2009 WSOP victims to the rail. The Casino Employees event is back as the opener event, the first of series of 56 scheduled WSOP side events and a Main Event.
The $500 buy-in event drew a huge field of 866 registrants, all employees of casinos from around the world. Such events always bustle with unknown players, though this one had a few familiar faces too: Jack McClelland, the former WSOP Tournament director was there together with Pat Poels who already has 2 WSOP bracelets to his name and Kyle Morris.
The event kicked off at noon Vegas time and the casino employees turned poker players were quickly at each other’s throat. The starting stacks were 3,000 chips deep and first level started off at 25/50. Heads began rolling almost the minute the action took off and half the field was denied further access to the tables within the first four levels. At the time of the dinner break (7 hours into the action) the field was down to 187 already.
It was then that the action slowed down a little. With the money bubble in sight, players began to tighten up, and thus it took four hours for the field to slim down to 81. The money bubble did burst but only barely as the day wound down.
Apparently, at the end of Day 1 it was Cesar Chavez who clinched the chip lead. thanks to a late streak of good calls. He managed to build his stack up to 107,700, but the official chip count has not yet been released and the situation near the top is rather hazy presently. Casey Kuhn appears to be in second place behind Chavez with around 100,000 chips and there’s a larger contingent of players breathing down both their necks around the 80k mark.
The 81 Day 1 survivors shall return to the tables on Day 2 to do battle for a first prize which is rumored to be in the vicinity of $90,000 and let’s not forget that the winner will also get the first golden bracelet of the 2009 Series.
