Tonight marked Day One of the 2007 Caesars Palace Classic Main Event, and 287 hopefuls filled the tournament room with their eyes set on the guaranteed $1 million first prize.

The city of Las Vegas hasn’t hosted a $10k buy-in event since the WSOP main event in July. This was evident in that the professionals made a point to show up and contribute to the $2,728,222 in the prize pool. The people at Caesars were kind enough to add $126,967 to the prize pool assuring the first place finisher would leave the tournament $1 million richer.

Tough tables and big names were themes to start the day. The tournament room was at capacity and if you were to make your way towards the action, you would first run across Mike Matusow and J.C. Tran battling one of three tables set up in the cash game area due to tournament overflow. They each took turns scooping small pots and Matusow shared no less than four stories of people being “idiots” within the first 15 minutes. It worked out great that in between idiot stories I could sweat the next table over, the most stacked table of the day. Antonio Esfandiari, Brandon Adams, Burt Boutin, David Benyamine and his fiancé Erica Schoenberg occupied the majority of this table. I felt sorry for the others seated there, until Benyamine was crippled moving with his pocket jacks after seeing a queen high flop. He was left with just 750 in chips and it wasn’t long before the table was broken.

Esfandiari made his way to his new seating assignment and happy to be at his new table, but not for the reasons you would expect. He was able to sit with the likes of entertainers like Tony Cousineau and one of the two WSOP Main Event winners in the field, Scotty Nguyen. “I like this table,” said Esfandiari. “My other table didn’t say a damn thing.” Unbelievably, this table may have been the only thing louder than Antonio’s t-shirt, which depicted a man with a bloody nose and the phrase “Cocaine Blows.”

There must be something contagious about the way Scotty says “baby.” It wasn’t long before most of the table was punctuating every line with a poorly accented “baby.” The main culprit of the phrase jacking was amateur Scott Russell. Russell says that he regularly sticks to $200 dollar tournaments, “but decided to put up the $10k after a big night at the Black Jack tables,” and some encouragement from a friend who “had a feeling he was going to win.” Russell took a big step towards that win by knocking out arguably the biggest name in the tournament. Scotty held 4 3 and was all in after the flop with trip fours. The 2 4 4 flop didn’t seem to scare him, until Russell turned over pocket twos for a full house, sending the Prince to the rail.

As for the other WSOP Main Event Champion in the field, he had better luck than Scotty. Johnny Chan, sporting a Perry Friedmanesque red die job, steadily built his stack over the course of Day One. Even a couple hits in his stack from Erick Lindgren couldn’t phase him as he held above the chip average all day.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a poker room as quiet as it became when Pamela Anderson came to wish her new hubby Rick Salomon good luck. One wouldn’t think that an entire tournament could stop shuffling chips for any extended period of time, but it can happen. I was there.

Maybe it was the appearance of Pamela, or maybe Johnny Chan’s new, crimson bangs, but something seemed to maybe distract the pros send a lot of them packing early. David Benyamine grinded it out for a while, before surrendering his short stack. His former table mate Brandon Adams followed shortly after when his pocket kings ran into aces. A once promising table of Isaac Haxton, Amnon Filippi and John D’Agostino was soon dismantled as Haxton was ushered to another table and eliminated. Minutes later, Amnon had his turned flush fall to a full house on the river. I didn't even have the privilege to view a Bill Edler hand before he exited, and David Williams left quietly after never really getting it together. Maybe saddest of all is that Kenny Tran was seated with WSOP foe Daniel Alaei, but busted out before I had the chance to hear him mutter the word “genius.” Good news is that the Chinese Poker tables filled up quick.

Gavin Smith was able to accumulate chips early. A nut straight helped him drag in a big pot and a full house put him over 25k. But it wasn’t long after that before Alan Jaffrey turned a straight and Smith all but declared war.

“Now you’re a target,” Smith said to Jaffrey. “Good news is you’ll probably have the best hand. Bad news is, I get lucky a lot.”

Those words held true for Smith as his K  Q  turned into a flush to crack the pocket kings of Richard Lee. But when he picked up A K and moved in on Jaffrey, his chants for “do it twice in a row,” couldn’t summon the power to crack Jaffrey’s A A .

I also bear bad news, in that Scott Russell’s buddy does not have psychic powers. Russell sat behind a shrinking stack before pushing with his pocket nines and coming out on the short end of a race. Thought it wouldn’t be long before another feel good story came out of that same table.

The tournament's final entrant, #287, was Sorel “Iper1um” Mizzi. He was one of many players trying to participate in both the Caesars Palace Classic, and the inaugural PokerBowl, taking place at the Palms Casino. He made it with only minutes remaining in registration and sat down next to his blinded down stack. He would take a hit in the last hand before the level 5 break, moving all in preflop with his 7  8 . His opponent turned over A Q  and the board missed Mizzi completely. Mizzi was down around 2,000 in chips and it wouldn’t be long before he was looking down at only one, green 25 chip. Mizzi was all in with the ante and thanks to a K 7 4 J 10 board, Mizzi was able to pick up the antes after a chop with Cousinaeu. He would more than double up again on a following hand. Than a couple hands later, he moves all in, save another single 25 chip, in with the 10  7. Esfandiari elects to just call and let him keep the green chip in front of him. The flop brings 4 5 6 and Mizzi needed help.  Luckily turn and river came 7 7 respectively and Esfandiari can only turn over his Q Q and laugh.

“That is so sick,” says Mizzi. “True story, I was down to one green chip,” he tells the new player seated on his left. Players begin making their way over to sweat Mizzi and count his stack, which after a couple more double ups reached 20,000.

Loudest bust out of the day goes to Steve Buckner. What started out as a scream free day, soon wasn’t as numerous yells of “one time, cuz!” filled the air. Buckner had check raised all in with 5 5 after a 8 Q 5 flop. After going in the tank, his opponent called and turned over the A Q for top pair, with top kicker.  The 2 turn gave his opponent a flush draw and Buckner let out a “no spade” cry. The 6 hit on the river and Buckner’s set of fives proved to be no good.  Buckner was beside himself.  Matusow tried to contain his laughter.

"I said, 'kid, do you have a set beat?' because I knew he had a set of fives or eights," Matusow told the table.   "I ask him if he's got the flush draw and says he's got a backdoor."

“You have got to be kidding me,” he yelled numerous times on his way out of the poker room. After taking a walk he was able to speak to me calmly. “I don’t like to go in so early like that,” said Buckner. “You can't get in much better than that. This game is just so harsh.”

There is one bonus about observing a tournament on a Monday night, and that is Monday Night Football. Screams were coming from all over and none of them were related to any of the poker action. Matusow seems to be paying more attention to his parlay than his hands.

With Jacksonville facing a fourth and long, and Matusow facing a losing parlay, the tournament field explodes as Indianapolis picks up the sack.

“Have a nice day, Merry Christmas!” yells Matusow. “What a sweat job. That’s what it’s all about, the adrenaline.”

Everyone settles back in and starts to focus on poker. Phil Laak made a valiant attempt to crack aces. Holding pocket queens, Laak is all in on a queen high flop, only to storm out after runner-runner gives his opponent a wheel. Soon Esfandiari was busted, curiously not long after his buddies left for a movie he was dying to see.

The end of Day One was nearing. Quietly, some top professionals had accumulated monster stacks heading into Day Two.  Here are the chip leaders.

Play will resume tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon with 94 players remaining.  Notable players like Johnny Chan, Justin Bonomo, Toto Leonidas and Erick Lindgren are heading into Day Two with stacks above the chip average of 45,000.  The top 27 finishers will be in the money with the top prize being that $1 million dollar prize and the championship.