News / Matthew Pitt / 07 July 2009 / Leave a comment

Five more member of Team Betfair took to the felt with another 1,691 entrants in the Amazon and Brasilia rooms of The Rio and four managed to survive, with 1,102 others to make it through to Day 2.

Congressman Barney Frank, the man trying his hardest to have the UIEGA overturned, utter those immortal words, "Shuffle up and deal!" and Day 1c was underway.

The first elimination only took seven minutes when on a flop reading JdTh5d there was a bet, a raise all-in and a call of the all-in. The original better showed a pair of aces before folding leaving the other players to turn their cards over. When they did they revealed TT and 55 for middle and bottom set respectively. The turn and river came down 4s and 7h and a stunned player headed to the rail whilst his opponent scooped the 60,000 pot.

Phil Hellmuth arrived to his seat with his usual charades, this time dressed as Caesar, flocked by 11 scantly clad muses, much to the amusement of the rest of the room.

Whilst all this was going on, Team Betfair player DMSPSB was busy adding chips to his stack, finishing the day with an impressive 68,550 chips whilst ponyboy and Cjakob both ended the day around the 27,000 mark. Finnish player Kikkimies ended the day with just shy of 20,000 chips whilst the unfortunate Phily busted out during the day's play.

Day 1d proved so popular that it actually sold out, leaving hundreds of players unable to play in the Main Event, more on that later. However, a number of Team Betfair players, including sponsored pros, John Tabatabai and Peter Jepsen were registered and ready to fly the Betfair flag.

In total 2,809 players started with 30,000 chips and a little over 1,900 survived to make it through to Day 2 giving the organisers a headache for Day 2b as it will likely be over capacity!

When the official attendance was announced, the players were made aware that of the 6,494 players who paid $10,000 to enter, 648 would reach the money places, the entire final table would become millionaires whilst the winner would walk away with over $8,500,000.

Most of the Team Betfair members who entered Day 1D came through unscathed, with Pburress ending the day with an astonishing 103,525 chips to put himself amongst the overall chip leaders. E V V O goes into Day 2 with 56,900 to play with, whilst oversleep has 54,700 chips.

Also still in with a chance of a huge payout are Peter Jepsen and Shaddy Yoz who both have just over 25,000 chips remaining, whilst bifta and PietejeHomo1 have 21,650 and 20,300 respectively.

Starting Day 2 slightly shorter stacked is tiltmonster with 17,400 chips in his arsenal whilst DIMEFI has a lot of work to do when he returns to the felt, needing to double his 5,095 stack sooner rather than later

John Tabatabai will have to wait until the WSOPE in September to attempt to win his first bracelet after he failed to make it through the minefield that is the Main Event. Shortly after busting out he described his exit hand in his blog.

After raising from the cutoff with A2o, everyone folded with the exception of the big blind so both players saw a flop of AxTx4x. The big blind lead out and Tabatabai says he knew he had an ace from studying his previous play but elected to call anyway. The turn was a two, giving the young Betfair pro two-pair, which he raised when the big blind lead into him again.

The gentleman called and then put Tabatabai all-in for his last 5,000 chips when a nine fell on the river. Tabatabai knew he had exactly Ace-nine but in his words he made a 'horrendous' call and of course the big blind had A9!

Another player who made it through to Day 2 whilst wearing Betfair colours was Chris Tessaro, a columnist for the Canadaian newspaper, the Toronto Sun. Mr Tessaro managed to end the day with 32,500 chips, more than a third of the field from Day 1 managed. Best of luck for the remainder of the tournament from all at Betfair Poker.