Three ex-WSOP champions eliminated on first day of 2011 Main Event

 Two-time champion Doyle Brunson (1976-77), 2004 winner Greg Raymer, and 2007 title holder Jerry Yang were eliminated in the $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em World Championship at the Rio.

Two-time winner Johnny Chan (1987-88) survived and will move on to Day 2’s action on Monday.

A total of 897 players took part Day 1, which is typically the smallest starting field. Fred Berger of Las Vegas finished the day as the chip leader with 209,500 in his stack.

Notable poker players who will move on to Day 2 were Sebastian Ruthenberg, Annette Obrestad, actor Jason Alexander, Lex Veldhuis, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Olivier Busquet, Josh Brikis and Mickey Appleman.

Two of last year’s "November Nine" who reached the Main Event final table, Filippo Candio and Soi Nguyen, survived and will continue on to Day 2.

Some of the notables eliminated Thursday were Adam Levy, who finished 12th in last year’s Main Event, and Matt Affleck who made deep runs in the Main Event in the past two years (80th in 2009 and 15th in 2010).

Last year, Canadian Jonathan Duhamel topped a field of 7,319 players to take home the top prize of $8.94 million.