Christian Harder leads after Day 1 of WPT Championship

Black Friday, what Black Friday? The $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship saw a solid turnout of 188 players take to the poker tables at the Bellagio on Saturday, and with registration open for the first three levels on Day 2 of the tournament it’s almost a lock that the WPT Championship will eclipse last year’s attendance mark of 195 entrants. Apparently Black Friday will have little effect on the big buy-in major tournaments -which is good news for the World Series of Poker!

Leading the way on Day 1 of the tournament was online poker superstar Christian “CHarder30″ Harder who jumped out to a quick start and by the end of the day was able to bag up nearly 250,000 chips.

Not far behind Harder is poker’s living legend Doyle Brunson, who is reportedly in the midst of leaving his eponymously named poker site Doyles Room according to gambling911.com, although Card Player Magazine reported that Brunson was wearing a Doyles Room shirt and had no comment on the current situation.

Brunson 10 member Steve Gross was also wearing a Doyles Room patch, and told Card Player that the rumors that Doyle was leaving the site were true. Oddly, Gross was the only Brunson 10 member wearing the Doyles Room logo, as Chris Moorman was sporting a Party Poker patch and David Sands and Amit Makhija were both without sponsors. It would appear that Doyles Room will be dissolving the Brunson 10 in the near future, possibly signaling an impending withdrawal from the US market???

Another storyline people are keeping their eyes on is that of Team Full Tilt Poker, and whether or not the major players at the site will show up for the tournament. On Day 1 Team Full Tilt members Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, and John Juanda all took part in the tournament, but the real interest is whether Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson will register on Day 2 of the event. Lederer and Ferguson are the two names most associated with Full Tilt Poker ownership; something that may keep them out of the US for the time being.

Here is a look at the top 10 chip counts at the end of Day 1 at the WPT Championship:

1.       Christian Harder - 249,975

2.       Ali Eslami - 240,475

3.       Kyle Julius - 237,675

4.       Justin Young - 234,575

5.       Alan Sternberg - 233,675

6.       Doyle Brunson - 230,000

7.       Kevin Saul - 229,975

8.       Masa Kagawa - 229,500

9.       Robert Mercer - 222,850

10.   Curt Kohlberg - 216,925