doubt there will be a cap, doesn't the thing have like 15 minute levels?

really looking forward to tomorrow, this field has to be the softest 1k+ liveament ever

also, i know the eagle hate is played out at this point and a running joke, but there's something very wrong with having open seats at games when there are 40+ on the list and not planning ahead to have enough dealers for game demand. it's tolerable to the point that i'll come during heartland time for all the value, but will never step foot in the casino otherwise. jfc incompetence

40 minute levels, and I believe there is a cap.

the last chance qualifier, not the main event. i assume the main will have a cap on entries at probably like 450 for reasons of dealer/table resources, not that demand will exceed it

your winner picture is by far the best of the 9 or however many

In the past, the Main events at Soaring Eagle have had 280 to 400 participants. Report is that this year the qualifiers leading up to the Main have been bigger. Rumor at Soaring Egle on Friday was that they would cap the main event at 480 seats. While this would be a significant increase in attendenace from past events, given the recent obsevations, entirely possible. My guess is 449 players with still room for others, only a guess.

i heard from one of the floor guys that they have 50 tables so that would put the cap at 500 people and he said that they might start it off 11 handed which would be the most tilting thing ever. so that would bring the max up to 550. and ya the floor is so bad they were bitching out my friend for over buying by like $20 in a 1k max game and the dealer's exact line was "i dont mean to be a bich but i am going to tell all the dealers about you and if u over buy again you r going to be kicked out of the poker room." and then after she got up and told the floor and he came over and yelled at us and said that the game was a 1k.

Ahh, my bad. And thanks, that picture makes up for my awful on-camera winners interview.

gl to everyone that plays today, hopefully nothing outside of poker will be too tilting today.

Too late for that, 20 mins late. Good job Eagle.

545 entries for the ME today. That's HUGE.

Was nice to chat with both Halowax and BraveJayhawk today, they're both great guys.

I think there's going to be quite a few people upset with how certain things were handled today. I'm going to add a couple of my own:

Besides the fact that there is no table redraw, the chip bags don't have the player's names on them. Even more tilting, the slips that go in the bags feature a player's initials, but not their names. I know most of these places only run a couple tournaments a year where there's a day 2, but it's still annoying.

Also of note, next year the plan is to do two opening flights, doing a Day 1A Friday with Day 1B Saturday. 545 was way more than the Soaring Eagle expected. Also, there was an unannounced dinner break after level 6 that wasn't noted on the structure sheet. The snack bar in the tournament area wasn't made aware of this fact until about 10 minutes before the dinner break happened.

The tournament has been a mess so far. Random gripes in the best order I can present them;

-The 3PM start time today was delayed by about 30 minutes as floor were still prepping tables with starting stacks and dealers at this time. I guess they wanted to sneak in a last minute mega satty this morning.

-The 11 handed starting tables were tilting. I guess you can say Soaring Eagle didn't expect this huge field/inexperienced/etc. but from talking to other players:

A) They started at 11 handed last year and didnt fix the issue
B) Its not like they haven't hosted HPT before, they should know the demand it brings (or should at least have some projections from HPT organizers)

-Floor was in general very disorganized. I re-entered in the middle of level 3, got the slip 'Table 31 seat 11'. I get to the table and there is no seat or chips, the floor gets called over, and she randomly places me at an empty seat at a table nearby and takes 1k off of my starting stack for blinds. Before the table broke at least twice a new player came over to claim the seat I was in, they never removed that marker from out of the empty seats and just placed those people in different random seats.

Considering their poker room has 15-20 tables they should have shut down cash games and had those tables available, with those obviously breaking first after the re-enter period. Unfortunately with the hectic running around from floor staff today I'm not sure they could have coordinated that smoothly.

-The dinner break sucked considering there aren't many dining options, and with only a half hour to navigate a meal during peak hours at the casino it didn't fare well for my buddies who were still in, I was running around like an idiot trying to get a table or to stand in line somewhere that wasn't packed to no avail, ended up bringing them food ordered from one of the lounges near the hotel.

-Obviously didn't experience this first-hand but heard the bagging/tagging sucked and considering how late day 1 started and finished today (3PM, 1AM) to come back at 10AM to play is pretty weak.

HPT should keep SE as a stop on the tour, but for their 'Championship Event' they could really choose a better venue and have a better structure. Turning Stone FTW

There was mention on the HPT's facebook page that 55th place would get $1640. Really? They LOSE money? That's absurd.

Lol I was wondering about that. Doesn't make sense. The HPT facebook updates are incredibly weak..

More importantly, CompleteDonk is sitting somewhere above avg. stack with 8 people left. Ship it one time!!

CD now 2nd in chips heading into the FT. VAMOSS!!!