South Africa's Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy topped a field of approiximately 1,200 entries on Tuesday's Day 1B opening flight in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event. Cape Town's Van Der Puy nearly quintupled his starting 60,000 stack to 287,000 after 10 hours of play. That was a single yellow 1K chip more than French star and four-time WSOP bracelet winner Julien Martini, who bagged 286,000 on the day.
Van Der Spuy and Martini were closely followed by three American players, Yuze Ding (284,500), Gar Cheung (281,500), and Andrew Graham (277,700), to round out the Day 1B's top five. Day 1A leader Yehuda Dayan holds the overall lead to date with the larger Day 1C and 1D flights still to play.
Van Der Spuy's stack topped 819 players reported to have bagged chips from Day 1B according to the WSOP's official overnight tallies. Though there's variance involved, roughly two-thirds of all Main Event players survive through a given Main Event's opening day given its current structure, indicating that perhaps 1,200 players entered Day 1B. The WSOP has kept official entry numbers blacked out to date in anticipation of setting an all-time attendance mark by the time registration closes later this week.
Nonetheless, roughly 2,250 players took part on Days 1A or 1B, and 1,640 of them will return along with today's Day 1C survivors for Friday's Day 2ABC.
As usual, plenty of famous players were on hand, and the leaderboard offered plenty of big names behind the top stacks. Finnish great Patrik Antonius (pictured above) bagged 263,500 to just miss the top five, while former Main Event champs Johnny Chan and Greg Raymer enjoyed solid days as well. Chan's 218,000 was good for 16th on the day, while Raymer's 201,500 placed 23rd among the day's survivors.
Plenty of other well-known stars topped the 125,000-chip plateau, including 2023 double-bracelet winner Chris Brewer (173,200), Jeffrey Lisandro (149,000), Andy Frankenberger (145,500), Matt Glantz (142,600), Amanda Botfeld (138,000), Dietrich Fast (133,500), who also told PokerOrg that his favorite color was yellow, and Asi Moshe (131,300).
Well-known players who didn't survive Day 1C included Galen Hall, Rick Salomon, Harry Lodge, Johan Guilbert, Keith Lehr, Andy Black, and Martin Kabrhel.
