Bodog Beat

Poker pro Mike Matusow is still alive after Day 1A of the 2007 Aruba Poker Classic. (Image Courtesy of MikeTheMouth.com)

The 2007 Aruba Poker Classic has wrapped up the first flight of Day 1 and the tournament is definitely living up to the expectation that it would draw a lot of online poker players as well as seasoned poker pros.

Surviving the Day 1A carnage are WSOP Europe champ Annette "Annette_15″ Obrestad and poker pros Mike "The Mouth" Matusow and JJ Liu. There are a lot of names on the end of day chip counts that we don't recognize but who all have quotations in the middle of their names indicating that they are possibly big on the internet. All in all, 116 players were left standing at the end of the day with casualties including Joe Sebok, Scott "SCTrojans" Freeman and Isaac "mr. menlo" Baron.

Day 1B is already in progress at the Aruba Radisson Resort and it looks like the star power decided to hit the beach for Day 1A and all show up today. Most notably Bodog poker pros Evelyn Ng and David Williams, who is already sitting at the featured table, are in the field along with Bodog regular Jon "PearlJammer" Turner and many other well-known players. Looks like the payout schedule has just been released and first place will take home just under $800k.

We will have a full Day 1B report for you tomorrow morning, so make sure to head back over here to the Beat for the full day's happenings.