May 24 2012, Donnie Peters

While the $25,000 Championship at the 2012 World Poker Tour World Championship bursted the bubble and reached the final table, the $100,000 Super High Roller was kicking off across the room. The last big event before the summer bracelet hunting began saw 25 players come out to action on Day 1 with seven re-entries. At the end of the first 10 levels of play, 19 remained with Justin Bonomo finishing on top. He bagged up 1.433 in chips.

You can only imagine the types of names that this massive, six-figure buy-in event would attract, but there were also some rather unknown players in the mix tangling with elite pros. Clemenceau Calixto, Rob Zeps, Michael Parziale, Roger Sippl, Daniel Perper and Bill Klein were amongst those lesser known players in the field and a few of them performed very well. Of that group, Calixto, Parziale and Zeps were eliminated on the day.

When it comes to the big names, it was more of a “who’s who” of the young superstars in the game. You had Isaac Haxton, Sam Trickett, Tom Marchese, David “Doc” Sands, Phil Galfond, Dan Smith and Jason Mercier all playing while Erik Seidel, John Juanda and Daniel Negreanu represented the “old guard” in the field.

Also playing in the event was former WPT champion Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, but he was eliminated by Trickett during Level 8. With the blinds at 2,500/5,000/500, the WPT Live Updates Team reported that Mercier had opened with a raise to 12,000 from under the gun before Grospellier reraised all in from the button for 120,500. In the big blind, Trickett made the call and then Mercier folded. Grospellier tabled the for two overs against the held by Trickett. A clean and simple ran out and Grospellier was eliminated.

Bonomo wasn’t doing so hot for the majority of the day, but a late surge was what earned him the chip lead. In the last level of play, Bonomo doubled through Seidel with the versus Seidel’s . All of the money went in preflop and Bonomo was fortunate to have the flop come down with three hearts to make him a flush.

We mentioned there were seven re-entries into the event and Negreanu accounted for two of those. That’s right, he fired two $100,000 bullets into this thing, but opted to not fire a third and enjoy some time off before the World Series of Poker. Cary Katz, Andrew Robl, Galen Hall, Marchese and Mercier were the other players to fire in a second bullet.

Super High Roller Day 1 Top 10 Chip Counts

During Day 1 of the event, the players unanimously voted to allow registration to stay open 15 minutes into Day 2. This should draw in a few more late entries into the event. It will also allow those that busted on Day 1 a night to think things over and put together another $100,000 to re-enter. Day 2 is scheduled to kick off at 1300 PDT (2100 BST) on Thursday. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for the daily recap.

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*Photo courtesy of BJ Nemeth at WorldPokerTour.com

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