Day 1 of Event #86 $1,979 Poker Hall of Fame Bounty No-Limit Hold-em has come to an end after an enthralling day’s action at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. An incredible 1,417 players entered the tournament generating a prize pool of $2,495,776, doubling the number of entries of last year’s iteration. The winner of the 2023 event will receive a massive $402,054 as well as the prestigious gold bracelet.
The day kicked off with a presentation in the Paris ballroom from World Series of Poker Vice-President Jack Effel who introduced Brian Rast to the stage to present his Poker Players Championship Gold Bracelet and officially induct him to the Poker Hall of Fame.
Rast was among the 15 Hall of Famers who participated in the Hall of Fame Bounty tournament, where each of the game's legends had a bounty on their head which amounted to the year they were inducted, and it was the newest inductee who was the first to be eliminated by Ferenc Szuchopa after Rast shoved with king-jack suited and ran into Szuchopa’s ace-queen.
The only remaining Hall of Famers to bag into Day 2 are Phil Hellmuth (281,000) and Eli Elezra (254,000), but Barbara Enright managed to navigate her short stack for a min-cash for $3,135. Other Hall of Famers whose bounties were collected earlier in the day were Huck Seed, John Juanda, Johnny Chan and Barry Greenstein.
End of Day 1 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Martin Zamani | United States | 1,258,000 | 126 |
| 2 | Osman Ihlamur | Turkiye | 897,000 | 90 |
| 3 | Roman Hrabec | Czechia | 772,000 | 77 |
| 4 | Xiaowen Zhao | China | 751,000 | 75 |
| 5 | Jason James | Canada | 715,000 | 72 |
| 6 | Valentyn Shabelnyk | Ukraine | 686,000 | 69 |
| 7 | Marc Moukarzel | France | 612,000 | 61 |
| 8 | Anthony Hu | United States | 580,000 | 58 |
| 9 | Kevin Calenzo | United States | 579,000 | 58 |
| 10 | Wayne Harmon | United States | 565,000 | 57 |
Martin Zamani will return to Day 2 with the chip lead of 1,258,000 chips. The high roller from Boca Raton, Florida also claimed the bounty of Billy Baxter midway through Day 1. Other big stacks include Rui Bouquet (762,000), Anthony Hu (580,000), and Anatoly Nikitin (515,000)
Play will resume tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. local time in the silver section of Horseshoe where the remaining 150 players will battle it out to a winner. Blinds will resume at 5,000/10,000 and a big blind ante of 10,000.
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