In the wake of Black Friday and players having large sums tied up online, there was significant concern that the World Poker Tour's recently announced $100k High Roller event accompanying the World Championship event at the Bellagio would suffer from low numbers. Despite a number of visible Full Tilt Poker pros like Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan, Howard Lederer and Gus Hansen not participating, there were still 29 players who put up the $100,00 to participate in the largest buy-in U.S. tournament ever. Justin Bonomo leads the pack heading into Day 2 on Thursday with over 1.8 million chips from the 400k starting stack.

Seventeen of the 29 players will head to Day 2. Notable players busting on Day 1 included Phil Galfond, Tony G, Phil Laak, Dan ‘jungleman12’ Cates, Tom Marchese, and Justin Smith.

Erik Seidel, king of the high rollers and tournaments in general is short-stacked but still in the field along with former High Stakes Poker commentator Gabe Kaplan and ex-Paris Hilton boyfriend Rick Salomon.

Remaining 17 players:

Justin Bonomo 1,837,000
Vivek Rajkumar 1,628,000
Erick Lindgren 1,607,000
John Morgan 1,009,000
Randy Dorfman 968,000
Sam Trickett 626,000
Gregory Brooks 611,000
Rick Salomon 582,000
Dan Shak 558,000
Daniel Negreanu 471,000
Eugene Katchalov 321,000
Gabe Kaplan 287,000
Ashton Griffin 273,000
Yevgeniy Timoshenko 258,000
Eric Seidel 237,000
Cary Katz 198,000
Tyler Smith 142,000

Play will resume at 12pm Thursday playing down to a final table.

Bonomo Tops WPT $100k High Roller Day 1