Online Poker Digest

At the 2010 World Series of Poker, Day 1c of the Main Event is complete. It was an increase from Monday’s and Tuesday’s day 1 flights as 2,314 players entered the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship event. at least 1,567 players will need to show up for day 1d, the last flight, in order for the 2010 main event to surpass the size of the 2009 main event and so far a total of 4,928 players have signed up for this year’s main event.

For some former main event winners, the third first day of competition was a good day. Johnny Chan, after his day 1 with about 150,000 chips, is among the chip leaders. To have his set over set hold up early in the day to increase his stack size to about 60,000, Chan was fortunate enough. From there he was able to put together an impressive first day of competition and gather more chips.

David Williams, the 2004 main event runner up, sits at about the same stack size of 150,000 and also had a nice first day. Joe Cada, last year’s winner, doubled his chip count heading into day 2, and survived day 1 of the 2010 main event. Michael Mizrachi, Sam Farha, Patrik Antonious, Michael DeMichele, and Hoyt Corkins are some other notable poker pros that are near the top of the chip counts.

It was not accommodating to some of the best pro poker and online poker players in the world even though day 1c was kind to some players. Men Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Isabella Mercier, Dario Minieri, and Jeff Madsen were some notable eliminations from yesterday.

David Williams has once again reached the pinnacle of the poker world. First, it was the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event runner-up finish against Greg Raymer, and now, Williams walked away from the Bellagio’s poker room in Las Vegas last weekend with $1,530,537 and the honor of being called the WPT World Champion.

During final table play, Williams had to play some of his best poker against some of the most renowned card sharks in the game, most notably Billy Baxter and David Benyamine. Baxter is known in the gambling world as an avid sports gambler and poker player. Benyamine is a high-stakes cash game regular who has played for the biggest stakes both online and live. The other three players at the final table were no slouches either. John O’Shea, Eric Baldwin, and Shawn Buchanan all put up valiant efforts during the course of final table play, with Baldwin actually taking second place for the entire event.

Williams had to stave off elimination at the hands of Shawn Buchanan when play got down to three players. Buchanan moved all-in with pocket queens only to be called by Williams and his pocket nines. However, a nine on the flop gave Williams the pot and eliminated Buchanan in third place. When it go to heads up play between Williams and Baldwin, only 22 hands were needed to decide the eventual champion.

Baldwin moved all-in over the top of a Williams raise with the ace and five of hearts. Williams, who had a major chip advantage over Baldwin, called with pocket deuces. An ace on the flop looked pretty to Baldwin, but the deuce on the turn gave Williams the set he needed to eliminate Baldwin and capture tournament victory.