The new format for the 2010 World Series of Poker seems to be a startling success. It’s clear from the amount of players that have filled the Horseshoe Hammond, a Chicago area casino, that poker is alive and thriving in the Heartland, and the Circuit after some years of decline is back. Hammond is the first of four regional Circuit event stops that will have both a regional Poker Texas Hold em Championship with a 10k buy-in and a Main Event with 1600 buy-in (or as players have taken to calling it the Little Main Event).

Apparently, the Chicago area casino has been awarding free seats to their cash game players well in advance of the tournament and have run an orchestrated series of satellites to boost attendance like they were an online poker site. The lucky cash game players would be playing in the lead up to tournament and a floor-man would walk by and high card away a seat or two. It turns out that were reports that local strip clubs had been giving away seats to the event as well.

The Little Main Event on day one brought 872 players to the casino which is a record for any Circuit Main Event anywhere. Jim Kasputis, of Rockford Illinois, had the distinction of having more chips than anybody else after day 1. Kasputis finished with 360k in chips. Considering the field was pared down to 162 players it’s almost surprising there was bigger stack somewhere.

Lurking behind Kasputis were several name pros like Bryan Devonshire (59th 123.9k), Brett Richey (98th 79.7k), Claudia Crawford (57th 126.6k), David Baker (63rd 113k), Adam Levy (43rd 137k) and Dean Hamrick (15th with 202k). Gulf Coast Poker.NET blogger’s Scott Clarke and Will Souther were alive at 108th and 135th in chips respectively. Clarke had 70k and Souther 51.5k. Also near the bottom after the first day were Darryll Fish in 128th place with 55k, Matt Brady in 142nd place with 46.5k, and Kathy Liebert at 119th with 60.4k. Several dangerous players including Kurt Jewell, Nick Jivkov, and Casey Hayes that might have a say in the event, before it’s all said and done, were in the top 25.

As Day one drew to a close Bret Richey got in one last hair-raiser of a hand after the tournament Director announced they would breaking on the completion of the hand. Richey had a suited AK and shoved over an early position raiser from the button. He didn’t like it much when the big blind called. It got better as the original raiser folded.

Richey had the big blind barely covered and had to sweat out a coin-flip as pocket nines were shown. The flop came Jack high with one spade (Richey’s suit). The turn brought some dram as a five of spades hit the board. It also paired it taking away the nine of spades as one of Richey’s outs. He still had all three kings and aces and the rest of the spades. A 7 of spades hit giving him the flush and giving him some chips to come back for on the next day.

Gabe Costner was one of the day one victims never really getting anything going. Frank Kasella, Jason Mercier, Sorrel Mizzi and Todd Terry could commiserate as they also would be looking for things to do during the run of play of day two. Darryll Fish did get off to a good start but like Kathy Liebert his day got turned around as it neared completion. At least they survived Kevin Saul built up a healthy stack but was nowhere to be seen during the bagging and tagging portion of the day.