2010 World Series of Poker

10 up, 10 down. We've reached the end of Day 1 of Event 51, $3,000 Triple Change No-Limit Hold'em.

The faux rebuy nature of this tournament created some interesting play early in the day. Some players took their rebuys right away, willing to take their chances on going broke in order to play deep-stacked poker. Others kept their rebuys behind and flicked their "gamble" switch.

Either way, everyone was on equal footing by the start of Level 5, when all of the unredeemed rebuy lammers were swapped for tournament chips. From there this tournament played down like so many other no-limit hold'em tournaments have at the World Series of Poker, with naked aggression being the dominant characteristic.

The bustouts started early. Double-bracelet winner Frank Kassela was among the first out, leaving with a simple, "Well I guess I played that badly." He was soon joined by the likes of David Williams, Gavin Smith, Vanesssa Rousso, David Steicke, Chino Rheem and many, many more. By the end of the night less than 20% of the starters were still around to bag up chips.

There was a handful of players that bagged more than 100,000 chips at the end of the night. Notables among them included Sida Yuen, Gavin Griffin and James Akenhead. It looked like nobody was going to bag more chips than David Singer, who managed to build his starting stack of 9,000 into 204,100 after ten full levels of play. But then on the very last two hands of the day, Tommy Vedes caught aces back-to-back to surge to the end of the day lead with 237,000 chips.

Vedes will begin tomorrow as the chip leader of the roughly 180 players remaining in this event, with a stack approximately five times the average stack. The field will have to be trimmed in half before we hit the money. It will all start at 2:30pm local time. Your intrepid reporters will of course be there to document the action.

Until then, you can find us at the bar.

Okay, so Tommy Vedes.

One hand after eliminating Andrea Piva with pocket aces, Vedes found them again on the final hand of the night. There was heavy preflop raising action, and Vedes ended up getting a player with pocket queens to fold. It was a good fold, too; the third player couldn't get away from his pocket kings, and Vedes was poised for another knockout.

There was no funny stuff on the board full of blanks, and Vedes has sent this day out with quite a bang. That final pot shoots him up to 237,000 and that's going to be good enough to snatch the overnight chip lead from David Singer barring some last-minute fireworks on another table.

A player in late position opened with a raise to 2,500, and Tommy Vedes reraised to what looked like 10,200 total. In the big blind Andrea Piva squeezed his cards and tanked for a couple minutes before moving all in for about 18,000 total. The initial raiser ducked out, and Vedes quickly called to put his man at risk.

It was rockets for Tommy V, , and Piva shrugged and turned up his . There was an eight on the river, but it was already too late for Piva. The board ran , and Vedes' set is bigger than Piva's.

That elimination pot moves Vedes up to 146,000 and up near the top of the scoreboard as the day nears completion.

We're at that magical ten-minute mark in the last level, and the clock has been paused. A seven was plucked from the mystical deck, and we'll play that many hands at each table before calling it a night.

With the board showing , Terrence Chan led out from the big blind with a bet of 12,000. His lone opponent actually threw 16,000 chips into the pot with a call, then said, "Well now you know I was willing to call 16. I guess you got a read."

The river was the . Chan fired again, this time for 20,000. His opponent tanked for about a minute before taking a stack of yellow (T1,000) chips and thrusting them into the center of the table. Chan didn't say a word as he turned up , a stone bluff. His opponent showed to take the pot with a pair of aces.

"Hell of a call," said a player from a neighboring table observing the hand.

Chan is down to 53,000.