The World Series of Poker Main Event is the flagship tournament upon which all live poker rides. This year, the tournament famed for costing $10,000 to enter, as it has since 1971, the first year that cost an entry at all. Back then, Johnny Moss proved the 1970 vote to name him the best correct as he won the 7-man single-table WSOP Main Event the following year.

Since then, of course, it has grown and grown, and this year’s Day 1a featured a massive 464 players, each contributing $5,000 to the prizepool. The guarantee for the event is a humungous $25 million, and that means the Main Event will need 5,000 entrants. Players can re-enter a different flight this year, a facility that has never happened before, of course. 

After the first flight concluded, 99 players made it through to Day 2, which doesn’t take place until the 30th of August. There were plenty of big names who entered but missed out on making Day 2, including Scottish poker legend Ludovic Geilich, four-time WPT winner Darren Elias, Chris ‘Big Huni’ Hunichen and Ben Farrell to name just four, but some poker luminaries did make the cut. 

The chip leader from flight 1a was Samuel Vousden, who ended with 717,497 chips. The Finnish player was follows in the counts by some other well-known names, such as former WSOP bracelet winner Julien Martini (576,965), Rui Ferrera (385,142) and Alexandros Kolonias (381,459), who will all have hope of running deep in one of the biggest online tournaments to ever take place.