World Poker Tour Players Get Eliminated

Day one of the World Poker Tour main event is now history and so are some of the game's top players. The Borgata Winter Poker Open's feature event, the $10,000 buy-in, also saw the arrival of numerous media outlets, including CardPlayer, PokerPages, and Pokerwire, to name a few, with more expected over the course of the main event. Turnout for the big dance proved to be better than expected with 381 players putting up the large buy-in for their shot at a $1,173,373 first-place prize. Although only one person can take the title of Borgata Winter Poker Open main-event champion, 75 players will make the money and go home happier than when they arrived.

The big story of the day has to be elimination of some of the game's biggest players. Falling from the poker sky were recent World Series of Poker Circuit winner, Daniel Negreanu, CardPlayer's Player-of-the-Year runner-up John 'the Razor' Phan, Layne Flack, Arnold Spee, Bill Blanda, last year's Borgata Poker Open main-event champion Al Ardibelli, Phil Ivey, 'Gentleman' John Gale, Paul 'the Truth' Darden, David Oppenheim, Victor Ramidin, Chip Jett, Mike Gracz and the winner of the first 2006 Cadillac Escalade given away by the Borgata, Arthur Azen. Possibly one of the more interesting stories of the day came from a non-poker professional who left quite an impression at the table. One of the world's toughest men also took place in the poker battle going on in the event center, but he got knocked out in the late rounds of the first day. Antonio 'Magic Man' Tarver, winner of the IBO Light Heavyweight Title in 2005, traded blows with some of game's top players, but eventually fell to the poker canvas when professional Gavin Smith gave him a knockout blow toward the end of the first day of eliminations.

"This is my first time playing in a big tournament. I just told myself I had to participate in the World Poker Tour at least once in my life. I thought my business was tough, but these guys are fighters at the table. Even though I didn't win, I still enjoyed myself here. I always stay at Borgata when I'm in Atlantic City. Borgata is a beautiful place and they treat me like family," Tarver said. Although Tarver was one of the big stories of the day, the biggest comes from a smaller package. Online star 'Johnny Bax,' a.k.a. Cliff Josephy, dominated play throughout the day and is in the chip lead with 386,200 in chips. The closest player to Josephy is Joseph Micelli who is in second-place with $179,700 in chips. With plenty of poker firepower left at the tables, Joesphy has his work cut out for him. He still has to beat over 160 players to take the title and the big first-place cash.