Big Names Have Big Stacks at WPT Tunica

Day 1 of the WPT's Gold Strike World Poker Open in Tunica has wrapped, and some big names lead the 163 players remaining.

Interestingly, as reported by Card Player, the number of participants this year has dropped 36% (from 512 to 327). This likely has more to do with the overall increased number of "major" tournaments a year--including two running right now (another $10k buy-in in Tunica, and one across the pond in Copenhagen)--then some downturn in the poker craze.

Leading the field after Day 1 is relative unknown Dale Morrow.  As listed in Poker Pages's player database, Morrow has five tournament cashes in his career, totaling $140,482.  From there, notables abound.  Check out Poker Wire for the full list, but some notable notables include: 2) Project Dirtbag fav Gavin Smith, - 136,200, 3) Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi - 135,175, 4) Barry Schulman - 113,750, 11) John Bonnetti (who got into an interesting altercation with Joe "Son of Greenstein" Sebok) - 87,575, 19) Sam Farha - 75,275, 26) Joe Sebok - 67,725, 27) Vinny Vinh - 67,475, 28) Hoyt Corkins - 62,525, 60) Eric Siedel - 44,350, 61) John Juanda - 42,525, 71) Scotty Nguyen - 36,800, 78) Todd Brunson - 34,850, 90) Clonie Gowen - 31,050, 102) Andrew Black - 26,075, 103) Chad Brown - 25,925, 119) Barry Greenstein - 21,175, 130) Hasan Habib - 17,625, 131) Dutch Boyd - 17,500, 135) Men the Master - 17,250, and 144) Olga "The inexplicably married to Robert" Varkonyi - 14,225.