Field at NAPT Mohegan Sun Rises to 716

The latest stop of the North American Poker Tour kicked off yesterday at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut. From what I understand, the Mohegan Sun is a huge place. Supposed to be the second-largest casino in the country, actually, in terms of square-footage. First opened mid-1990s.

Several of my buds are there covering the sucker, and I’m following their reports online over at PokerNews and on the PokerStars blog. Am checking out Andrew Feldman’s reports at the ESPN Poker Club, too -- here’s his Day 1 wrap. By the way, that cool photo from the event is by Joe Giron of the PS crew, with whom I worked at the NAPT Venetian event.

Looks like they ended up drawing 716 players to the $4,700+$300 Main Event, including some of the Full Tilt pros who were not at the NAPT Venetian event, such as Tom “durrrr” Dwan (who didn’t make it through the first day of play) and Phil Ivey (who did). David Williams leads the 450 or so who made it through to today’s second day of play. Vanessa Selbst also accumulated a big stack yesterday, ending the day in second position behind Williams.

The wildest hand I saw reported yesterday was over on the Stars blog, a hand that occurred right near the end of the day. Faraz “The Toilet” Jaka -- a final tablist in the NAPT Venetian High Roller event and who has been on a rampage for the last year or more -- called an opponent’s all-in bet on the river with the board showing , risking half of his stack. His opponent showed -- Jaka had correctly guessed he’d missed a draw.

What did Jaka have? . No shinola. The hand report comes near the top of the page here, if you’re curious.

Seems like 716 is a solid number of entrants for this second American stop on the NAPT. Over a third of those -- 273 -- won their seats via satellites on PokerStars, showing again how much online satellites can help build fields. Feldman reports that the Mohegan Sun tourney manager told him they had planned for just 600 to come. But once they had reached that figure, players kept coming. And coming. Meaning some last-minute scrambling was required.

You can read Feldman’s explanation of how that went down in his report, including what it was Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler was complaining about over Twitter regarding the seating.

Overall, though, it sounds like that first day went off fairly well and with a $3.2 million-plus prize pool looks to be another major event on the professional circuit.

No other NAPT stops have been announced as yet, although I would expect we’ll hear something soon along those lines. I’ll be interested, partly because I’m hoping perhaps to get a chance to cover one or more of ’em down the line.

Speaking of, I found out yesterday that I will be returning to the WSOP this summer to help cover the Series for PokerNews. Will be my third time, and I am definitely excited to be going back. Details to come!

Meanwhile, check those links above for more reports from the NAPT Mohegan Sun.