Day 1A Wraps Up

From a field of 51 overall entries, Day 1A of the Ameristar St. Charles Main Event wrapped up with 9 players moving on to Sunday's Day 2.

Craig Casino - on more than one occasion - looked as though he's be an early casualty as he was down to 4,400 chips at least twice within the first 4 levels. He went on a multi-level heater, building to nearly 300,000 before closing out the night with

Ryan Tepen was never able to generate much traction throughout the day, yet he lasted until the 10-handed table before busting out early in Level 15. Others who entered Day 1A but were eliminated before the end of day included Shawn Roberts, Roger Campbell, Cliff Mills and Andy Ernstein.

William Fitzgerald (above) made a big jump up to the top of the leaderboard when his top pair held against a gutshot straight flush draw from then-chipleader Matt Fuhs is the night's biggest pot of about 250,000. He began punishing smaller stacks once the field was down to 14 and kept that pressure on until the bag-n-tag time to end Day 1A as the chipleader with 399,000.

Day 1B kicks off at 2pm Friday, players start with 30,000 chips and play 15 40-minute levels. There's a 60-minute dinner break after Level 9 and late registration for Day 1B closes at 9:30pm, the start of Level 10.

Here are the chipcounts for the players who advanced from Day 1A

399,000	William	Fitzgerald
277,500	Craig	Casino
215,500	Eric	Sieler
177,500	Robert	Ormont
125,500	Jason	Simon
97,000	Lonnie	Schiller
93,000	Mike	Lang
89,500	Garrett	Riley
55,500	Carl	Hauter

-- Dan Ross - HoldemRadio.com