First Day Of Main Event Action Concludes

819 players survive Day 1a field of 1,125

Monday afternoon saw the start of the first heat of the 41st World Series of Poker Main Event kick off as 1,125 entrants for Day 1a action assembled at the Rio in Las Vegas.

There will be three other Day 1's as the field is reduced through to two Day 2's and then the survivors are consolidated into one highly competitive field in Day 3.

Former WSOP Main Event champ Greg Raymer was given the honour of making the first ‘shuffle up and deal' call, which he did with minimum fuss, saying simply: "We're not gonna waste any time here. Let's shuffle up and deal!"

Famous face spotters reported seeing a slew of big names around the tables on this first day of event 57, among them former WSOP main event champion Chris Moneymaker, Scott Seiver, Greg Mueller, Lee Watkinson, Chino Rheem. Barry Shulman, Kevin Schaffel, Michael Mizrachi, Lacey Jones, Isaac Haxton, Andre Akkari, Peter Gelencser, Tiffany Michelle, Vitaly Lunkin, T.J. Cloutier, Dwyte Pilgrim, Andy Black, Kirill Gerasimov, David Sklansky, Nikolay Evdakov, Juha Helppi, Maria Ho and celeb comedian Ray Romano.

Tournament officials called it a night late night Monday with 819 players still in contention at level 5 and Dwyen Ringbauer the chip leader on 191,125 chased my Mike Mizrachi on 110,300. These players will go through to compete against the survivors of Day 1c later in the week.

Notable departures during the day included Greg Raymer, Chino Rheem, Mike Caro, Victor Ramdin, David Steicke, Isaac Haxton, Jimmy Fricke and Ray Romano.