Notable players who have survived their first day include: Eric Baldwin, Vanessa Selbst, Shaun Deeb, Daniel Negreanu, Joe Cada, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Ivey and Brian Hastings.
Some notable poker pros that have already been eliminated so far include: Phil Hellmuth, Joe Hachem, Tom Dwan, Chip Jett, Bertrand Grospellier, Greg Raymer, Justin Smith, Chino Rheem, Andrew Robl, Lex Veldhuis, Jonathan Duhamel and Chris Moneymaker.
Elky was also a pro gamer on the StarCraft Team who then focused his attention to online poker and then live poker and become a member of Team PokerStars Pros.
The first place prize was $331,639 although winning a WSOP bracelet is worth far more to ElkY than the prize money.
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The 40th Anniversary of the World Series of poker is well underway with the first event being the Casino Employees tournament which started on Wednesday but the real news is the $40,000 Event #2 of the WSOP 2009.
The $40,000 No Limit Hold’em special tournament got underway this Thursday with a total of 201 entrants the $40,000 buy in was designated to highlight the World Series’ 40th year anniversary and has managed to attract a poker star studded tournament, the tournament itself will be conducted over four days with a slow blind structure and deep stacks of 120,000 for starters event, slowed down the structure and gave players plenty of chips to play with. The $40k NLHE will be one of only four WSOP events aimed for broadcast on television by ESPN next summer.
