The Last of the Prelims
Good afternoon from the Pavilion, and a very warm welcome to Event #57, the last of the bracelet events before the Main Event takes center stage on Thursday. This one is a $5,000 buy-in pot-limit Omaha hi-lo event. Last year, Chris Bell bested the field of 284 players to win his first gold bracelet and more than $325,000. We'd expect to see a similar field size this year, possibly bolstered a bit by the fact it's been slid down to the tail end of the calendar where competing events are a bit more sparse. This is also a Triple Chance event, meaning the players will start with three 5,000-chip bullets at their disposal.
We were scheduled to start in about a half hour, but that's not going to be the case. The Pavilion is completely full of players from the noon tournament today, and the spillover Yellow section only has one or two vacant tables set up for us. There were two rows available in the Black section, but dealers were quickly assembled for the last late-reg tables of the $1,500 event. We've just heard the announcement that we're going to be delayed until 5:30 P.M., and we're less than surprised.
So, 5:30 is it. We'll keep you posted if that changes again -- and don't be surprised if it does. But if not, we'll see you back here in less than an hour to kick off the final preliminary event of the 2011 WSOP!