The World Poker Tour Alpha8 series is back, and the first day of play for the series after the long hiatus returned at The Wynn/Encore Las Vegas yesterday.
In the middle of the fabulous strip casino sat cameras, lights, and many of the biggest names in poker. A total of 39 entries took their seats for the $111,000 Alpha8 for OneDrop event. Only 15 of those players found a bag to return to action for Day 2 today.
As we've highlighted, $7,000 of each buy-in, the large majority of the money not going to the prize pool, goes to the OneDrop Foundation and its charitable efforts.
It's not too late to get in the mix, though. Registration is open until the start of Day 2 today, that's level 11. Your 250,000 starting chips would be worth 25 big blinds. Here are the current field and stack sizes.
Table 32
| Table | Seat | Name | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 32 | 1 | Dan Smith | 1,256,000 | 126 |
| 32 | 2 | Ramin Hajiyev | 144,000 | 14 |
| 32 | 3 | Artur Martirosyan | 337,000 | 33 |
| 32 | 4 | Empty | ||
| 32 | 5 | Empty | ||
| 32 | 6 | Empty | ||
| 32 | 7 | Adrian Mateos | 386,000 | 39 |
| 32 | 8 | David Stamm | 253,000 | 25 |
Table 33
| Table | Seat | Name | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 33 | 1 | Empty | ||
| 33 | 2 | Isaac Haxton | 579,000 | 58 |
| 33 | 3 | Iaron Lightbourne | 1,325,000 | 133 |
| 33 | 4 | Santhosh Suvarna | 414,000 | 41 |
| 33 | 5 | Aleksejs Ponakovs | 1,455,000 | 146 |
| 33 | 6 | Jonathan Jaffe | 332,000 | 30 |
| 33 | 7 | Empty | ||
| 33 | 8 | Empty |
Table 34
| Table | Seat | Name | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 34 | 1 | Brian Kim | 676,000 | 68 |
| 34 | 2 | Empty | ||
| 34 | 3 | Empty | ||
| 34 | 4 | Empty | ||
| 34 | 5 | Rick Salomon | 629,000 | 63 |
| 34 | 6 | Henrik Hecklen | 608,000 | 61 |
| 34 | 7 | Kevin Rabichow | 158,000 | 16 |
| 34 | 8 | Michael Lim | 1,249,000 | 125 |
Day 1 casualties
Some poker legends were in the house to support the WPT, the OneDrop foundation, and to take a shot at the large prize pool. Not all were fortunate enough to find bags.
The likes of Jason Koon, Justin Bonomo, Nick Petrangelo, Sean Winter, Seth Davies, Stephen Chicwick, Bill Klein, and Chris Brewer were some who weren't able to find a bag heading into today.
In addition, WPT Ambassador Phil Ivey survived most of the day. However, he fell in the late hours of the day when his flopped top pair was no good against the overpair of Aleksejs Ponakovs to send him out the door.
Remaining tournament schedule
The remaining players rejoin today at 1:00 pm local time, joined by any max-late registrants who take their seats with 25 big blinds.
Players will play as many levels as necessary to reach the six-handed final table. Once they've hit that number, they'll bag up and return on Sunday for the final day of play, which will be live-streamed.
Best of luck to all remaining players, and follow along on both WPT.com and our Instant feed for all the updates.
All photos courtesy of WPT
