The 2021 WSOP Main Event keeps on trucking. After the huge turnout on Day 1D, Day 1E was expected to be a little quieter.
Day 1A saw a lockdown for the Rio and a smash-up for Brandon Shack Harris's car. Day 1B was little more relaxed, and saw Johnny Chan bust and Mike Matusow survive. Day 1C was mostly about hyping Day 1D. Day 1D was all about the turnout.
Day 1E fell between the Day 1D rush and the expected Day 1F Eurogeddon. Even so, the turnout was still a respectable 797 players. This brought the total number of entrants up to 5,315. That puts this series hot on the heels of 2005's turnout of 5,619 players). That is with another Day 1 flight still to come, plus whoever rolls out for Day 2 late registration.
Speaking of 2005... among Day 1E's entrants were the 2005 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Hachem. Hachem made it to Day 2, but others were not so lucky.
Daniel Negreanu busted in level 2 of the event in an aces over kings pre-flop cooler. As a result, his WSOP Main Event vlog series is relatively short. You can watch the full video on YouTube. Negreanu captioned the video on Twitter with the ironic line:
"We finally start our Main Event Journey on Day 1E. We get a nice table draw and see an interesting Aces vs Kings spot.
Oceans rise, empires fall
Ryan Leng, Rafael Moraes, Andrew Barber, and Gershon Distenfeld also failed to convert their buy-in to a Day 2 stack.
Other players who made it through Day 1E along with Joe Hachem were Romain Lewis (157,100), Victor Kudinov (152,300), Shankar Pillai (113,400), David "ODB" Baker (98,100), Robert Mizrachi (95,500), David Gerassi (316,100, and the Day 1E chip leader), and previous WSOP Champ Scott Blumenfeld (95,000).
Eli Elezra made Day 2 with a modest stack of 29,500. He stopped to chat with Jeff Platt on the floor. Platt tweeted the interview with the caption "Running into @elielezra1 on Day 1E of The Mainnnnnnn...."
Early in the day, news broke that WSOP lammers are now non-transferable. This put a shadow over much of the day. Many players who had ground satellites or had bought lammers on the secondary market suddenly found themselves in possession of some very expensive espresso coasters.
Meanwhile back online, "incel4life" was taking down Online Bracelet #7, echoing Phil Hellmuth's no-sex run in 1987. A decision that Hellmuth has dubiously claimed was his own.
Featured image source: PokerGO
