WSOP Day 40 Review: Daniel Negreanu, Dan Smith and Ryan Leng all Bust the Main Event; Joe Hachem Rolls Back the Years

With just one more starting flight to come, the competition of Day 1e of the World Series of Poker Main Event was intense and dramatic, with major players in poker losing their tournament lives. Elsewhere, other made hay while in the un as two former WSOP Main Event winners had great days at the felt.

With a total of 797 players, only 592 players survived across a day of drama at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. David Gerassi bagged the chip lead with 316,100 by the end of play on Day 1e. Players such as Kenn Pluard (307,600) and Conrad De Armas (302,800) were his closest challengers as two former Main Event champions both rose high too.

‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie’ All Over Again?

The 2005 WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem was a particular player to watch on Day 1e, with the Australian poker hero on the feature table during the stream on PokerGO:

Hachem, who recently looked back at his incredible success in 2005 with Remko Rinkema on PokerGO, went through with a massive stack of 186,100, and the 2017 world champion Scott Blumstein (95,000) also made Day 2 with plenty more than he started with, although Blumstein would not be joined in the chipcounts by the runner-up four years ago. Dan Ott busted during a Day where he was reminded by a tablemate that no-one reminds anyone other than the winner.

Big names such as Romain Lewis (157,000), Andre Akkari (139,500), Max Greenwood (135,500), Dan Colpoys (123,400), Shankar Pillai (113,400), Dietrich Fast (112,600), and Frank Funaro (103,700) all made the end of day counts, however, with Fast in particular one to watch all day after getting off to a strong start very early on.

Big Names Depart on Day 1e

Although many superstars survived to Day 2, we lost some poker legends on Day 1e, with Daniel Negreanu chief amongst them. The Canadian departed after a monumental clash of premium hands went against him, Kid Poker running kings into aces to bust.

Dan ‘Cowboy’ Smith left in a big hand too, his WSOP Main Event dreams shot down when his ace-king couldn’t get there against pocket queens in a pot worth 125 big blinds.

With Ryan Leng, Andrew Kelsall, Andrew Barber, Dan Ott, Jason Wheeler, Kelly Saxby, Zach Gruneberg, Maurice Hawkins, Yiannis Liperis, Gershon Distenfeld, and Courtney Webb all losing their seats on Day 1e, 592 players survived, meaning that across the five starting flights so far, a massive 3,921 have sewn up Day 2 seats from a total field of 5,116 players.

Day 1f is extremely likely to be the biggest Day 1 in over two years as players such as Phil Hellmuth and recent Poker Players Championship winner Dan Cates prepare to face the field of superstars, poker amateurs and everyone in between in a bid to become 2021 world champion.

On Day 1a of the $1,111-entry Little One for One Drop Event #68, Mukul Pahuja took the chip lead with a massive stack of 518,300 chips as 490 entries were whittled down to just 143 survivors.

With players such as Fernando Ribeiro (428,000), Poorya Nazari (377,500) and Steven Stolzenfeld (376,200) closest behind, Main Event bustees Ryan Depaulo (114,200) and Daniel Negreanu (93,000) both survived to Day 2 with two more starting flights for the event to come across the next two days.

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