Day 1a and 1b of the World Poker Tour $25,000 Championship took place over the weekend, at the World famous Bellagio Casino and during those first initial days, nearly every big name poker player imaginable walked through that casino's impressive doors. 

337 players in total competed during this event's two day ones and thanks to immense starting stacks of 100,000 in tournament chips, only 36 have been eliminated thus far.  Some of those few players eliminated include Phil Hellmuth, Josh Arieh, Allen Cunningham, Clonie Gowen and PokerRoad's Kevin Saul.

Although over 300 players survived the day 1 flights of the WPT Championship not all of them performed equally, and in fact some key names at the moment truly stand out with more than double their starting stacks now sitting in front of them.  Some of the top stacks entering Day 2 include J.C. Tran (218,300), Shane "Shaniac" Schleger (215,150), Steve Billirakis (232,450), Rhynie Campbell (239,600), Freddy Deeb (210,000), Johnny Chan (291,675) and Vadim Trincher (309,725)- the WPT's most recent champion (Foxwoods Poker Classic) and remarkably this event's current chip leader.

Day 2 of the WPT Championship kicks off today (4/20), for full updates, chip counts, photos and videos from this amazing event visit www.worldpokertour.com.


Story by Mark Anderson