Friday at the Rio was the start of a busy weekend’s action. The $1,500 NLHE Shootout event crowned a winner before the day was out, when Brandon Schaefer beat Jonathan Cohen heads-up for the bracelet. Schaefer had about a 2:1 chip lead when he made a great call of Cohen’s semi-bluff with an open ended straight that missed on the river and sent the $311,174 first prize Schaefer’s way. Both Layne Flack and Jeff Madsen got knocked out pretty early in the final table action.

The $5,000 7-Card Stud hi/lo has just ended (5:30 am local time) after an epic day’s play. 19 started the day and it came down to a heads-up battle between Todd Brunson and Adam Friedman that lastest over 3 hours. Hellmuth and Ivey succumbed pretty early in the day though Ivey did manage to hang for 7th place. Friedman’s victory bagged him his first bracelet and $269,037. Brunson is still looking to break into the winners’ enclosure again having not won a bracelet since 2005.

To the $1,500 Shorthanded NLHE event next and we started the day with 137 hopefuls remaining. The action was fast and furious on day 1 and today was much the same, when we played all the way down to a final table. Robert Muzzatti leads the way on almost 1.5M with Mark Darner right behind him. They have almost double the chips of Mike Matusow who sits in 3rd on 816,000. Matt Glantz, Mark Radoja and Matt Matros all have enough chips to do some damage at the final table tomorrow too. The final table begins tomorrow at 1 pm with the average chip stack above 60 big blinds, so plenty of room to play.

The $10,000 Pot Limit Holdem event got off to a disastrous start with less than 90 registered at the start of play. The total field by the time registration closed was 179, way down on 2011. Consistent performer Steve Landfish is the chip leader on 224,500 but he’s in good company on the chip leaderboard with David Benyamine, Liv Boeree, and Erik Seidel breathing down his neck. There are lots of other dangerous players with chips including JP Kelly, Sorel Mizzi, Elky, Phil Ivey, Humberto Brenes, and Mike McDonald. Among those to bust on day 1 were Viktor Blom, Isaac Haxton, Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, and Bill Chen.

The $2,500 Razz got a healthy 309 entrants and played down to 136 on day 1. Tommy Vedes is top of the heap with Tom McEvoy, Phil Hellmuth, Ted Forrest and Barry Greenstein in hot pursuit. Play resumes at 2 pm tomorrow in this one.

Two events kick off for the weekend tomorrow a popular $1,500 NLHE event starts at 12 pm and the $5,000 Limit Holdem at 5 pm. It sure to be a crazy day tomorrow so come back and find out what went down after the action concludes.

Author Profile: Rob O’Connor+

written by Rob \\ tags: Bracelet, Mike Matusow, Poker, Rio, Winners, World Series of Poker, WSOP