A Pair Of DQ's And An Earthquake Highlight Day 1C Of The World Series Of Poker Main EventThe Biggest Starting Flight In WSOP Main Event History Was Filled With Strange Occurrences |
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Day 1C of the 2019 World Series of Poker main event will go down as one of the wackiest days in poker history.
Two players were disqualified from the tournament in the first level, there was an earthquake that literally shook the Rio, and this all took place in one of the biggest starting flights in WSOP main event history.
The first DQ of the day happened within the first hour of the level when Georgii Belianin was disqualified for taking chips from another player’s stack. Belianin won a small pot and then after scooping in his newly acquired chips, he reached over to his neighbor’s unattended stack and merged the entire stack into his.
According to other players at the table, he didn’t speak much English, was drinking and had a smile on his face as he was doing it, leading some believing that this was a poor attempt at humor.
“I’ve played with Georgi online and off for about ten years, and never had a negative experience. Always trying to have a good time in spite of language barriers. My gut says this is a (dumb) joke gone wrong, and tbh being Russian not doing him any favors,” tweeted two-time bracelet winner Brandon Shack-Harris.
Belianin was escorted out of the tournament area and his chips were taken out of play.
Another player in the field decided later in the level that he wanted to one-up Belianin. The unidentified player moved all in without looking at his hole cards.
Patrick Eskandar was in the tank with pocket fives and his opponent stood up from his seat, told everybody that he was all in blind, turned his back to the table, and pulled his pants down, mooning the players at his table and exposing his genitals to players at the other table. After returning his pants to his waist, he bent down, took off his shoes, and tossed them at the dealer.
Eskandar eventually called with his pair, but took a bad beat and lost the pot. His opponent won the pot, but his chips were taken out of play and he was DQ’ed.
As if the staff wasn’t worn out enough from having to deal with those two situations, mother nature decided she was going to throw a wrench in the plans.
Here is the video of the situation from Scott Davies. Warning: This video is graphic and NSFW
Uhhhhhh what is going on at the #WSOP main event??? Player shoves blind, drops his pants, then throws his shoe on the table (video via @blattsmullet) pic.twitter.com/oHGk5pjlnJ
— Scott Davies (@sdaviespoker) July 5, 2019
For the second day in a row, there was a massive earthquake 237 miles southwest of Las Vegas in Ridgecrest, CA. Friday’s quake registered a whopping 7.1 on the Richter scale and the aftershocks from that quake shook the Rio with 40 minutes remaining in level 4.
The floor began to shake and anything that was hanging from the ceiling swayed back-and-forth. In the Brasilia room, a piece of glass fell from the ceiling and shattered on one of the tables. Many players ran from their table and into the hallways, but nobody was injured during the earthquake.
The staff decided to send the players on their 90-minute dinner break 40 minutes early before returning to play the final 160 minutes of the night, which went incident-free.
Wes Cutshall captured the footage from his table in the Pavilion room.
Despite the plethora of incidents, there was actually some poker played. A whopping 4,879 players came out for the third and final flight of the tournament, making it the largest starting flight in main event history, surpassing last year’s Day 1C, which turned out 4,571 players.
Registration is open until the start of Day 2, so the field size and prizepool have yet to be finalized, but when it does, it will be at least the second-biggest main event in history. Through three flights, there are at least 8,127 players in the field. With 646 more, it would pass the 2006 main event, which drew 8,773 players.
At the end of the night, there were just 3,664 players remaining, which means there will be at least 6,047 players who are still alive in their respective Day 2 field. While the official chip counts are not finished yet, James Henson finished the night with 316,100 and appears to be the chip leader from Day 1C.
Other players who finished with big stacks include Mike McDonald (306,300), Chris Limo (277,400), Cody Brinn (267,400) and Adam Friedman (263,100). Friedman won his third bracelet earlier this summer and has experience running deep in this event. In 2005, he finished 43rd for $235,390.
Friedman knows just as well as anyone how long of a grind this is and how little your Day 1 chip count matters.
“All you can do is not get overly excited, not think too hard,” said Friedman about finishing Day 1C with a big stack. “This is a 12-day tournament now? I probably wouldn’t get excited unless I’m lucky enough to get to the final 100 or so. Then maybe I’ll get excited. Until then, you just got to stay calm and try not to let anything get to your head.”
Playing through an earthquake, however, is something that got Friedman a little excited.
“During that earthquake, my head started spinning a little bit,” he said. “That was my first earthquake that I’ve experienced.”
Not everybody was lucky enough to make it through the day. Ping Liu, Kitty Kuo, Shaun Deeb, Doug Polk, 2005 champion Jamie Gold, 2014 champion Martin Jacobson, Humberto Brenes, and Phil Ivey were all eliminated from play on Day 1C.
Ivey’s day was especially quick. He was eliminated in less than an hour after he lost half his stack very quickly and then got the rest of it into the middle with the nut flush draw against Jeffrey Chang’s top two pair. Ivey couldn’t hit a spade and was out.
The players who survived today’s action will return on Sunday at 11 a.m. for Day 2C, while the players who survived Day 1A and Day 1B will return on Saturday at that same time for Day 2AB. The field will combine on Monday for Day 3.
For more coverage from the summer series, check out the 2019 WSOP landing page, complete with a full schedule, results, news, player interviews, and event recaps.
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