The WSOP 2008 is underway with its first event, the $10,000 buy-in World Championship Pot Limit Hold’em. This event will be played over three days. The legendary Doyle Brunson did the honors of declaring the games open with his words “Shuffle up and deal!”

Eli Elezra leads Day 1 of the event with a chip stack of 302,900. He is already about 50,000 chips ahead of the pack, which is bunched up between 200,000 and 250,000 chips. Amit Makhija is second with a stack of 251,100. There were no real big names in the top ten on Day 1, but there were some real big names in the list of the eliminated. These include Chris Moneymaker, Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu. Dancing With The Stars star Shannon Elizabeth also exited.

WSOP 2008 is taking place at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It will dominate the poker world till mid July.