The Field Reaches 77 in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship; Seiver, Kassela and Andrulis First to Bow Out
Day 1 of Event #33: $50,000 Poker Players Championship brought out 77 runners for the first six levels of play. After the first day of play, three-time bracelet winner Benny Glaser bagged up the chip lead, bringing a stack of 574,900 into Day 2. Glaser climbed up the leaderboard over the course of the day and already had over 500,000 chips just before the last level of the night. He added a bit more to that count before the end of the night. All three of Glaser's bracelets come in non-hold'em events, so it's no surprise that he's performing well so far in this eight-game mix.
There were only three players who failed to make it through Day 1 and those were Scott Seiver, Frank Kassela, and Kristijonas Andrulis. Seiver was the first of the three to fall, dropping to John Monnette in a cooler of a pot. Seiver flopped a full house with pocket sixes before Monnette turned a bigger full house with pocket tens. Seiver did not improve to quads and he was the first of the day to hit the rail.
Kassela and Andrulis would fall after that. Kassela ran top pair into the nut straight of Matthew Ashton in no-limit hold'em while Andrulis got it in with queens against Johannes Becker's kings in pot-limit Omaha. Becker improved to trips to send Andrulis to the rail.
Noticeably absent from the field today was Phil Hellmuth. Hellmuth was at one point selling action for this event but decided last minute that he was not going to play. In a tweet, Hellmuth said he just wasn't feeling right about playing the event, and that he was going to trust his gut and not play at all. The 14-time WSOP bracelet winner instead opted to play in his first-ever Seniors event, where he got eliminated on the first day.
Among the players who did show up and make it through the day were two-time champion of this event Brian Rast (473,900), recent-bracelet winners John Hennigan (449,000) and Paul Volpe (390,800), as well as Alexander Kostritsyn (415,600), John Monnette (386,900), Anthony Zinno (493,200), David "ODB" Baker (387,400), Naseem Salem (443,400) and Dan Cates (347,000) who all bagged up some of the largest stacks in the room by the end of the night. Rast took down a big pot at the end of the night in a round of pot-limit Omaha with a set of aces against Alexander Kostritsyn to get a big chunk of his chips that he'll bring into Day 2.
Action resumes on Saturday, June 16, kicking back off at 2 p.m. local time where players will play an additional six levels. As usually, players will have a 15-minute break after every level and on Day 2 will have a one-hour dinner break after level 10, at roughly 9:20 p.m. Registration for the event will remain open for a total of four more levels and through the dinner break, so roughly until 10:20 p.m. PokerNews will continue providing live coverage of this event from start to finish, so don't miss any of the updates from Day 2's action.
board Kassela called all in holding 
.
for the nut straight, and consequently eliminated Kassela late here in Level 5.
on the flop of 
against Becker's 
.
, and river the 
, and Andrulis was eliminated.
![[user139916]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
with around 18,000 in the middle, Alexander Kostritsyn bet out 12,000 from the big blind.
for a straight flush, and Deeb mucked.
and both players checked to see the 
on the turn. There, Matusow led out with a bet of 22,000 and Haxton folded quickly. 
on the table. There was right around 10,000 already in the pot when Chidwick checked over to Andrew Kelsall, his lone opponent. Kelsall put out a bet of 5,700. 
, and Ashton mucked.
