Earlier Alexandre “Allingomes” Gomes took the chip lead with around 100k. Gomes is coming off his recent win at the Bellagio Cup WPT event and his confidence has to be high, but his 100k chip lead has been more than doubled by another player that has had recent success. Steven Begleiter is the chip leader here at the Legends of Poker with over 230k, but no matter what happens here Begleiter has bigger fish to fry in another poker tournament. He is a member of the November Nine and still very much a contender to be this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event champion. But while that tournament is on hold Begleiter is putting on a show here and will almost surely lead the pack into day 2 play.

Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little (right) has been one of the more consistent players in live poker over the last few years, and a late day double up moves him up the chips counts. Little bet 12k on the Q756 turn and was another player raised all in. Little called off his last 25,300 and turned up the KT for a flush. The other player also had a flush with his Q9 but the higher flush won a large pot for Little.

Aces were no good to Josh “Sdouble” Schlein, but on the bright side he only lost 9,475 on the hand.  Schlein had Yosh Nakano all in preflop with pocket aces against the pocket nines of Nakano but on the T-T-9 flop Yosh hit his set and was able to double up.  Schlein still had almost 50k after the hand.

Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke was all in with a pair and a flush draw against a higher flush draw, but ended up being eliminated when the other player made a runner runner straight.  Fricke battled all day with a short stack after a rough first level and was never able to get things turned around.  For Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson the day was mostly a steady climb but he did have a minor setback late in the day.  Marco bet 7,200 on the river of a board showing JJ5T3 but folded his hand when he was raised an additional 15k.

The other crazy, Zach “CrazyZachary” Clark picked up a small but intense pot in a hand against Chad Brown.  A 3,100 chip river bet on the T529Q board was good enough to win the pot, but both players took minutes to decide on each action.  Chad “M8kingmoves” Batista got a late day double up when his pocket kings held up against Thuy Doan’s AK in an all in preflop situation.  Chad was up to 60k after the double up.

Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul and Mohsin “ChicagoCards1″ Charania were late day eliminations.  Roughly 180 players made it through day one with the top 27 players making the money.  A full payout structure is available through the Blind and Payout Structures Link in the left toolbar.

Full chip counts are available at The Bikes Website. Click the download link to open a PDF file with the full chip counts.

Here are a few counts we caught at the end of the day:
Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little - 81,100
Bryan “badbeatninja” Devonshire - 76,725
David “Bakes” Baker - 40,000
Steven “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer - 38,150
Adam “A_Junglen” Junglen - 24,000

Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson, Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar and Carter “ckingusc” King were all spotted with decent stacks late in the day.

• August 23, 2009 -- End of Day 1 Counts
• August 23, 2009 -- Into the Night
• August 22, 2009 -- 300… Almost
• August 22, 2009 -- Counting on the Stache