The PCA, now a massive tournament with hundreds maybe even a thousand online qualifiers, got off on the right foot.  Titled a Carribean Adventure it was just that for everyone that bought or won a satellite in.  With 669 players on day 1A registered to fight it out for the top prize things went according to plan for a couple of big names.  Barry Greenstein and Dennis Phillips found themselves along with Daniel Negreanu near the top of the leader board.  For them their adventure was a series of chip-stack raiding Indiana Jones successes but for those players that busted quickly they must have felt like anonymous henchmen of the villains Jones defeated.

There are few more beautiful places than the Bahamas and the site of the PCA.  For the 430 players that survived and especially those that survived with a ton of chips the serene waters and calm beaches were looking all the more beautiful and beckoning.  Their day off would be one of rest and relaxation in paradise.  For those that got felted they probably wanted to get out of paradise as quickly as an inmate wants to leave prison.  Seeing their peers that survived, or worse that knocked them out, lounging and enjoying the pools and beaches would probably make the bitter pill of elimination even harder to swallow.

The PCA is a bit like a convention of online tournament poker players.  Kids who know each other only by screen names descend on Atlantis with laptops in hands and likely play poker online tournament  more so then they play the live events.  Online tournament pro is a relatively new job title but the best in their field were all in the Bahamas with only a few international exceptions.  The Americans were certainly represented. 

The top of the leaderboard didn’t feature a star from online poker tournaments like Jonathan Little (whose had success there in the past) or Brock Parker instead it was Wayne Bentley.  The youngster with the luxury car last name was riding in the fast lane and found himself the richest of the rich.  With almost two times the chips of Kevin Saul (second in chips) Wayne was the upper crust of Day 1A.    While there was no traffic jam of players behind Bentley, the Imperial Ballroom of the Atlantis Resort had some other poker royalty within eyesight of him on the leaderboard.

As mentioned Kevin Saul was below Bentley and above Eric Froehlich in second place.  Like third place Froehlich Saul got his chops playing poker tournaments online.  Another stellar online tournament player making his name now in live play is Vivek Rajkumar whose 112,000 in chips put him in 4th spot.  Ben Lamb and James Mackey aren’t anonymous but certainly haven’t broken through yet.  Sitting at 5th and 6th in chips they hope the PCA will be just the tournament for them to do so.  With a possible first place prize that could hit 3 million or more it would be the right tournament for either of them to win. 

Live poker players have taken a bad rap on the forums of late.  Certainly Phil Ivey gets respect from online players and live pros alike but some of the other old guard bare the brunt of online poker pros wrath with comparing skill sets.  In a field replete with online pros, Barry Greenstein in 7th, with 98k in chips, and Daniel Negreanu mowing over players to take him up to 8th, with 91.5k in chips, have to be enjoying dishing out some revenge by felting the upstarts.

Dennis Phillips, was a latter-day Chris Moneymaker, an everyday guy, how can you get more everyday than a guy who makes his living in the truck driving business, but Phillips has followed up his final table run of two years ago with some results.  Once again he’s in the thick of things with his big rig trying to chase down the Bentley from the 9th spot with 90k in chips.  Dave “Doc” Sands is at 80k.