After 10 levels of play, the last cards were dealt, the last chips were pushed, and the remaining players are exiting the Tournament Hall.

Players started with 50,000 in chips and played through ten 60-minute levels. The tournament logged 316 total entries (including 63 re-entries), and at the end of the day, 114 players bagged chips to carry on to Day 2. The chip leader for Day 1B is also the overall chip leader in the tournament so far: Danny Freitas. He managed to accumulate just over 650K in chips today – an impressive figure for a player that is already coming off a deep run in the Colossus.

The Main Event allows for a single re-entry per flight, as well as direct buy-ins during the first two levels of Day 2, providing everyone plenty of opportunities to get their share of the $2,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.

Today was the 2nd of 4 Live starting flights in the tournament. Yesterday’s Day 1A received 260 entries and 89 players were left standing. To those 89 qualified players for Day 2, we can now add today’s 114 players. Day 1C gets underway Thursday, August 30th at 12:00pm.

Full results from today’s Day 1B have been added to the Combined Day 1 results  page.

Here are some final photos of Day 1B:

We came up to a table where Trevor Delaney had an approximately 30,000 bet in front of him. He was up against two ladies who had both gone all-in. Regina Auletta was all-in for 75,800, and Kathy Sawers had all of her 32,700 chips in front of her.

It took quite a while for Trevor to make up his mind. After a few furtive glances to the side-by-side women, he gave a huge sigh and folded his hand. This fold seemed to surprise the other players considerably, after all he did have almost half of the required chips already committed to the pot.

With Delaney out, both ladies tabled their hands.

Regina:

Kathy:

As the dealer took out the flop, Kathy liked but definitely didn’t love what she saw:

Now, on top of all the jacks, Kathy had to dodge any club and every queen.

The turn was a brick.

But in the end the river gave Regina the win with a somewhat simple solution: top pair.

So Kathy Sawers was sent to the rail and Regina doubled-her stack to a more comfortable number. Now with more than the average, and only 40 minutes left to play, it gave her some much-needed breathing room.

Poker players know it, Kenny Rogers said it… You’ve got to know when to fold ’em.

We came up on table 35, where early tournament chip leader Steven Martin was involved in a key hand. Although Steven did not have quite as many chips as when we last visited him, he still had a very decent stack in front of him.

The flop was out: .

Jean-Francois Alexandre and Alemu Makonen were already all-in, and Steven was pondering his decision. Alexandre had pushed all-in with 73,300 chips, and Makonen was all-in for 56,300. There was an additional 22,000 in the pot, and we could see Steven mentally struggling with his decision.

“I’m folding a monster here guys.” he exclaimed and showed: . Pretty much every player at the table agreed with his statement. Both all-in players tabled their hands:

Alemu Makonen:

Jean-Francois Alexandre:

So up against bottom set and top-top it seemed once again that Steven had done a great fold.

Then the turn came: . All eyes turned to Steven Martin, and we didn’t need a crystal ball to know what they were thinking… bad fold?. Steven stayed ramrod straight, not showing any emotion whatsoever.

Then the river changed everything:

Jean-Francois took in the 150,000 + pot, with his full house threes over sevens, and Alemu Makonen was sent to the rail. Martin had made an excellent decision.

Maintaining a stack is a lot of work, as Steven Martin just proved. As the dealer moved on to the next hand Steven turned to us and said: “Darn that was a hard fold”. Quite right sir!

Going into the last stint of two levels for Day 1B, Danny Freitas has taken over the chip lead in Day 1B of the flight. Fresh off a solid final table performance in the Colossus, Danny has managed to build an impressive stack that’s just a hair below 400K – and with two more levels, he has an opportunity to grow that further.

Second in chips is local tournament player Kevin Rivest, who is up over 285K, with Srinivas Gottiparhi, Tony Stratopoulos, and Curt Kohlberg rounding out the top 5.

Play will continue until the end of level 10 at which time the remaining players will bag their chips to take to Day 2.

Day 1B has just passed the 300 milestone for entries. The boards now show 309 entries (including 57 re-entries), with 163 active players left.

As we slowly head towards the next break, following which we will bring you an updated leaderboard, we took a few more photos of the players still in the action.

The players are away from the tables on their dinner break, and most of the players are refueling for the rest of the session at the hot and cold buffet provided for all Main Event players. While they were away from the tables, we took the opportunity to put together an extended list of chip leaders, covering everyone we could find that was playing a stack of 150,000 tournament chips or more.

Steven Martin continues to be the chip leader, having amassed an impressive stack of over 300K so far. Local players Kevin Rivest and Eric Leblond are hot on his heels, however, playing stacks of 262,800 and 234,600, respectively. The other thing to note is that two of the Colossus final table players, Danny Freitas and Trevor Delaney, are both on this list.

There are 4 levels left to play tonight, and following level 10, everyone who still has chips will bag them up to return to play on Day 2, which will be held on Saturday September 1st at 12:00PM. At this point in the flight, there are 189 players remaining of a total of 293 entries so far. Registration continues throughout today’s starting flight, so that number is expected to go up at least a little bit before the end of the day.