2013 World Series of Poker

Today the 2013 World Series of Poker continued as 1,014 players packed the Brasilia Room for Day 1 of Event #20 $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split 8-or-Better. That was 47 players more than the year prior—representing a nearly 5% increase in attendance—and meant there was a $1,368,900 prize pool on the line. That will be distributed to the top 117 players, with a healthy $277,274 reserved for the eventual winner. The man best positioned to capture it? That would be John Larson, who emerged as the chip leader of the advancing 219 players with 73,700.

While Larson had the most chips, plenty of other notables bagged up big stacks including Thomas Besnier (66,600), Eric Sclavos (53,600), Brian Hastings (47,900), Robert "Chip Burner" Turner (47,700), Dmitrii Valouev (42,400), James Bord (40,000) and Matthew Kelly (39,700).

Of course not everyone was so lucky. Among those to hit the rail on Day 1 were Maria Ho, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Chad Brown, Cory Zeidman, Matt Glantz, Phil Hellmuth, 2007 champ Alex Kravchenko, 2011 champ Francesco "Cheech" Barbaro, and the defending champ Herbert Tapscott.

While many big names fell, quite a few are still in contention including Max Steinberg (36,300), Carlos Mortensen (31,500), David Chiu (29,000), Daniel Weinman (28,400), Barry Greenstein (27,900), Men "The Master" Nguyen (27,000), Mike "The Mouth" Matusow (23,700), Owais Ahmed (23,000), Mike Sexton (22,900), Tom Schneider (18,600) and Jennifer Harman (17,000), just to name a few.

Day 2 is set to kick off at 1:00 PST on Tuesday. Join us then as we bring you all the updates on the way to the money and onward to the final table. Until then, good night from the Rio.

The tournament staff has just announced that the remaining players will play seven more hands before bagging and tagging for the night. We're headed out to the floor to capture any last-minute hands and to grab a list of notable chip counts. Stay tuned for those and a full recap of the Day 1 action.

Play has slowed a bit here at the tail end of Level 10. We've noticed quite a few players ordering beers, perhaps an early celebration for making Day 2. They've got about 15 minutes though until the clock expires, and as well all know anything can happen.

Right now the clock says 239 players remain, which means there will be quite a ways to go tomorrow before they make the money at the top 117.

We walked into a hand that had significant preflop and post flop action involving Allen Kessler.

Kessler was short, and got his chips in with . The board came , giving Kessler a live four for the nut low. However, one of his opponent also had the nut low, and the other had a better two-pair. Kessler got quartered, but is still alive with 3,000 chips.