Mike Matusow 2nd in chips at the WSOP TOC

We are through with day one in the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and our man, Mike Matusow is sitting in 2nd place with 107,600 chips! The day started with 108 players that were invited to play in this 2 million dollar freeroll. First place is a whopping 1 million dollars (although that amount pales in comparison to the 7.5 million from this years main event).

Now the most interesting part to this story is not that fact that Mike is in second place but rather, who's in first. None other than the John McEnroe of poker, Phil Hellmuth sits in the throne for now with 110,900 chips. It's not clear if Mike and Phil will start at the same table today but odds are either way, they will wind up at a table at some point today. When that happens, I'm betting the ESPN camera crews will be ALL OVER that table. This event will be broadcast sometime next year and I predict will be the most entertaining ESPN broadcast yet. The fireworks are BOUND to go off when Phil or Mike gets knocked out of this one. I'm rooting for Mike to win and I feel like he's a good shot to take it down but regardless, one of them has to lose for the other to win so....

What I think is interesting is that despite putting in over 12 hours of play yesterday, Mike was still spotted playing big limit poker last night at Full Tilt Poker! Mike has commented in the past about how easy it is to make thousands playing high limit poker online. He continues to prove that point as he sits almost daily at Full Tilt with 20-30K in front of him...

Mike needs to be rested up today as the TOC restarts, with only the top 9 spots paying out it will surely be a long day. The field will tighten their play the closer the bump spot comes and with many amatuers left in the field, who knows how long that will take. While most pros will get agressive as the bump spot nears, some amatuers will tighten up considerably. One amatuer to note is Aaron Bartley from Cary, NC. He's known online as "GambleAB" and recently placed well in a WSOP Circuit event. He's a solid player that started out playing 3-6 at PokerStars years ago and is a threat anytime he makes a final table, he sits in 5th place starting today.

The rest of the field looks like this:

1 Phil Hellmuth 110900
2 Mike Matusow 107600
3 Hoyt Corkins 65700
4 Lonnie Alexander 58600
5 Aaron Bartley 53200
6 Michael Mizrachi 46700
7 Johnny Chan 46500
8 Mark Hanna 44700
9 Neil Gersony 42300
10 Chad Brown 40800

So the names to watch are obviously Mike, Phil, Johnny Chan, Aaron as the darkhorse, and Michael Mizrachi. Hoyt can either go broke quick or come into the final table with a huge lead so he's dangerous as well. Keep an eye out here for updates as the day progresses.

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