West Palm Beach, Fla. (August 9, 2014) — After two grueling days of no-limit hold'em, Day 1A and Day 1B of the World Series of Poker Circuit $1,675 Palm Beach Kennel Club Main Event are in the books. This is the first Main Event of the 2014/2015 WSOP Circuit season and the two Day 1s combined for a field of 303 players and a prize pool of $454,500, with first place earning $106,806. A total of 51 players survived the first two starting days and will return on Sunday at noon to play Day 2 of the three-day event. Both days played 15, 40 minute levels and the chip leader heading into Day 2 is Zo Karim. He played Saturday afternoon on Day 1B and bagged 372,000 after the final hand was dealt. Joining Karim atop the chip counts is Pooyan Khodadoust and Nathan Bjerno. Khodadoust played Day 1B as well and Bjerno was the biggest chip stack from Day 1A. Khodadoust is the only player close to Karim with 331,000. Bjerno, who is in third chip position, heads into Sunday with 198,000.South Florida is home to some of the best poker players in the world and plenty of them made it out to Palm Beach Kennel Club for the action. Tristan Wade, Brian Hastings, Chance Kornuth, Harrison Gimbel, Justin Zaki, David Diaz and Ylon Schwartz have all made it through to Day 2 and are still in contention for a WSOP Circuit ring.
Not everybody was as fortunate as them though. There were plenty of well-known pros who were unable to make it through to Day 2.
Former Main Event Champions Jamie Gold and Greg Raymer both made it out to add a Circuit ring to their trophy case. Gold couldn’t seem to gain any traction and was short most of the day before being eliminated late in the day. Raymer, on the other hand, built an above-average chip stack before he lost a big pot against Seven McKoy to leave him short and he was eliminated during the second to last level of the day.Other notables that were unable to survive Day 1 were Barry Hutter, Maurice Hawkins, John Dolan, Steve Karp, Ian Ohara, Rex Clinkscales, David Tuthill, John Holley and Ryan Tepen.When the tournament resumes, the money bubble will be looming over everybody’s head. With the top 33 players earning at least a min-cash $2,713, they will be only 18 eliminations away from earning a payday.When the cards get in the air on Sunday, the blinds will be 1,500/3,000 with a 500 ante and the average stack is just over 118,000. The levels will be increased to one hour in length and the plan for Sunday is to play ten levels before bagging and tagging chips for the night. WSOP.com will have complete coverage of all the day’s action from start to finish. Top 10 chip counts:1. Zo Karim - 372,0002. Pooyan Khodadoust - 331,0003. Nathan Bjerno - 198,0004. Tristan Wade - 194,0005. Luke Graham - 186,0006. Eugenio Castaneda - 170,0007. Thong Tran - 162,5008. Steven McKoy - 162,0009. Ylon Schwartz - 158,50010. Justin Zaki - 158,500
Full chip counts and chip counts arranged by table/seat are available on WSOP.com.