Aleksejs Ponakovs on top of WPT Alpha8 Day 2 field

The World Poker Tour Alpha8 series is back, and the first day of play for the series after the long hiatus returned at The Wynn/Encore Las Vegas yesterday.

In the middle of the fabulous strip casino sat cameras, lights, and many of the biggest names in poker. A total of 39 entries took their seats for the $111,000 Alpha8 for OneDrop event. Only 15 of those players found a bag to return to action for Day 2 today.

As we’ve highlighted, $7,000 of each buy-in, the large majority of the money not going to the prize pool, goes to the OneDrop Foundation and its charitable efforts.

It’s not too late to get in the mix, though. Registration is open until the start of Day 2 today, that’s level 11. Your 250,000 starting chips would be worth 25 big blinds. Here are the current field and stack sizes.

Table 32

Table	Seat	Name	Chip Count	Big Blinds
32	1	Dan Smith	1,256,000	126
32	2	Ramin Hajiyev	144,000	14
32	3	Artur Martirosyan	337,000	33
32	4	Empty
32	5	Empty
32	6	Empty
32	7	Adrian Mateos	386,000	39
32	8	David Stamm	253,000	25

Table 33

Table	Seat	Name	Chip Count	Big Blinds
33	1	Empty
33	2	Isaac Haxton	579,000	58
33	3	Iaron Lightbourne	1,325,000	133
33	4	Santhosh Suvarna	414,000	41
33	5	Aleksejs Ponakovs	1,455,000	146
33	6	Jonathan Jaffe	332,000	30
33	7	Empty
33	8	Empty

Table 34

Table	Seat	Name	Chip Count	Big Blinds
34	1	Brian Kim	676,000	68
34	2	Empty
34	3	Empty
34	4	Empty
34	5	Rick Salomon	629,000	63
34	6	Henrik Hecklen	608,000	61
34	7	Kevin Rabichow	158,000	16
34	8	Michael Lim	1,249,000	125

Day 1 casualties

Some poker legends were in the house to support the WPT, the OneDrop foundation, and to take a shot at the large prize pool. Not all were fortunate enough to find bags.

The likes of Jason Koon, Justin Bonomo, Nick Petrangelo, Sean Winter, Seth Davies, Stephen Chicwick, Bill Klein, and Chris Brewer were some who weren’t able to find a bag heading into today.

In addition, WPT Ambassador Phil Ivey survived most of the day. However, he fell in the late hours of the day when his flopped top pair was no good against the overpair of Aleksejs Ponakovs to send him out the door.

Remaining tournament schedule

The remaining players rejoin today at 1:00 pm local time, joined by any max-late registrants who take their seats with 25 big blinds.

Players will play as many levels as necessary to reach the six-handed final table. Once they’ve hit that number, they’ll bag up and return on Sunday for the final day of play, which will be live-streamed.

Best of luck to all remaining players, and follow along on both WPT.com and our Instant feed for all the updates.

All photos courtesy of WPT