October 19, 2018 (Hammond, Ind.) - Day 1A and 1B are now complete for the Horseshoe Hammond Main Event. After the first 15 levels of play, the current chip leader is Michael Perrone. Perrone bagged up 649,000 in the first flight of play and it held up to be the biggest stack of both flights. Bagging up the chip lead on Day 1B of play was Alex Triemanis. Triemanis surged into the lead in the last few levels of play and he bagged the chip lead with 479,000 he'll come into Day 2 as a top five stack, over 100,000 chips behind Perrone.
In total, the Horseshoe Hammond Main Event drew out 1,094 entrants creating a total prizepool of $1,657,410. Of the runners, 117 will be paid with a mincash being worth $2,718. A final table appearance will be worth $29,999 for 9th place but everyone will be playing for the first place prize of $302,492, a WSOPC Main Event Ring, and a seat in the Global Casino Championship. There were 96 players who survived Day 1A and 140 players survived on Day 1B, so approximately 236 players will return for play on Day 2.
Among the survivors from Day 1B are the likes of Maurice Hawkins (126,500), Anna Antimony (378,500), Chris Conrad (270,000), Zo Karim (151,500), Ben Keeline (128,000), Schulyer Thornton (112,500), Charles Johnson (161,000), and Aaron Massey (202,000) to name a few. They will join the survivors of Day 1A such as WSOP Circuit Ring winners Robert Hankins (162,500), Ralph Massey (362,000), Ryan Phan (147,200), Krzysztof Stybaniewicz (113,500), and WSOP Bracelet winners David Pham (205,000) and Tom Koral (197,500). Blake Battaglia, who won this event last year, bagged up 96,500 at the end of Day 1A.
Plenty of big names were unable to make it through to Day 2 though. Among the notables who fell on Day 1B were Christopher Carey, Blake Whittington, Stephen Song, Timothy McReynolds, Jean Gaspard, Keven Stammen, Wendy Freedman, Kevin Eyster, Mukul Pahuja, and Dylan Wilkerson. Wilkerson ran into a brutal cooler at the hands of Maurice Hawkins towards the end of the night. Hawkins and Wilkerson both flopped flushes and Hawkins extracted three streets of value from Wilkerson for a monster pot. He was eliminated shortly after but said he would be back for the High Roller which begins at 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Players will return for Day 2 on Sunday, October 20th at 11 a.m. local time. Action will kick off in level 16 with blinds of 2,000/4,000 with an ante of 500. The plan is for players to play 10, one-hour levels with a dinner break after level 21. Sunday is likely to be a moving day and once again, WSOP.com will return with updates from all the action so make sure to tune back in so you don't miss a thing.