BRANDON CANTU, CHRIS LINDH HEADLINE LAS VEGAS CIRCUIT EVENT
The walls of the Caesars Palace Poker Room are lined with photos of some of the most famous faces in the game, but when the WSOP Circuit comes to town, players need only look across the table to see the notables, bracelet winners, and Main Event sensations.

The Las Vegas leg of the WSOP Circuit is always a star-studded one, and this year’s Main Event field proved to be no exception. The tournament drew the likes of November Niners like Phil Collins and Jay Farber, bracelet winners like Jason Somerville, Eric Baldwin, Brent Hanks, Leo Wolpert, Dana Castaneda, and Brandon Cantu, and other notables of the game like Erica Schoenberg, Doug Lee, Doug Carli, and Jimmy Fricke.

In total, the $1,675 buy-in single re-entry Main Event at Caesars Palace produced 697 entries, making for a $1,045,500 prize pool and a $219,000 payday for the lucky winner in the event. The top 72 finishers will each earn a payday.

After two starting days of action, just 129 players remain, with 51 Day 1A survivors and 78 Day 1B survivors. The pace was set early in this tournament, as Chris Lindh stormed to the top of the counts midway through Day 1A and never looked back. Lindh, who finished 16th in last year’s WSOP Main Event, ran his 20,000-chip starting stack to up over 500,000 before ending the night with a chip-leading 418,500.

While Lindh-sanity was the theme of Day 1A, recent Harrah’s Tunica Main Event champ Jonathan Gaviao also had an amazing opening day of action where he amassed a stack of 386,000. These two will be the two overall chip leaders headed into Day 2, which gets underway at 12pm PT on Sunday.

Day 1B saw plenty of other players run up a stack, but none could get too close to the big stacks. In fact, Day 1B chip leader Christian Pham was the only player to bag up more than 300,000 chips, ending with 312,000.
Bracelet winner Brandon Cantu was one of the latest registrants in this year’s event, but he put his time to use by running his stack up to 262,500 by the end of Day 1B. He was not the only bracelet winner to advance through the field either. Eric Baldwin (43,500), Arkadiy Tsinis (67,500), Josh Pollock (70,000), and Brent Hanks (170,000) also made it through to Day 2.

Some of the other notables still alive in this event include Doug “Rico” Carli, Chris Conrad, David Nicholson, Nancy Birnbaum, past Caesars Palace Main Event champ Kevin Calenzo, Jessie Bryant, and Zal Irani all survived to return on Sunday too.

Other players were less fortunate. Folks like Jamie Kerstetter, bracelet winner Robert Cheung, Casino Champion points leader Sal Musto, bracelet winner Leo Wolpert, 2013 WSOP Main Event runner-up Jay Farber, Doug Lee, Erica Schoenberg, and Ashly Butler are some of the long list of players who hit the rail (twice in the case of many who re-entered).

When play resumes at 12pm on Sunday, we shall see if the Lindhsanity continues or if some other big stack takes the reigns and kicks the second day of action off with a bang, bringing the fireworks to Sin City.

Here is a look at the overall top ten counts headed into Day 2. A full list of chip counts and seat assignments are available on WSOP.com:

1. Chris Lindh – 418,500
2. Jonathan Gaviao – 387,000
3. Darrell Neville – 367,000
4. Christian Pham – 312,000
5. William Chao – 281,500
6. Brandon Cantu – 262,500
7. Viet Vo – 240,000
8. Ofer Akerman – 232,500
9. Daniel Heredi – 223,000
10. David Nicholson – 222,500