Kentucky’s Douglas Gibson will take a healthy lead into day two of the $1,000 no-limit hold’em event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas this evening.

A field of 3,144 players created a prize pool of $2,829,600 at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino, with $488,283 and a gold bracelet going to the winner and players paid down to 324th for $1,895.

With only 323 players remaining, 22-year-old Cherish Andrews – last year’s Heartland Poker Tour (HPT)’s Turning Stone (women only) hostess contest winner – was the unfortunate bubble girl, going out in 324th during the last hand of the day.

Gibson, though, sits on 146,600 chips – which is 32,500 ahead of second-placed Canadian Christopher McClung.

There are some other big names near the top of the leaderboard heading into day two, as well, with Britain’s Luke Davies sitting on 109,300 in third, and American trio Nick Petrangelo (95,000) in fourth, Lee Satterwhite (84,400) in fifth and Karoon Monfared (84,200) in sixth.

Other notable players to survive the opening day include Team PokerStars Pro Gualter Salles (18,500), of Brazil, in 215th, Americans Dwyte Pilgrim (37,500) in 79th, Barry Shulman (19,100) in 208th, Lars Bonding (66,000) in 24th, Mike Leah (10,200) in 288th, and Matt Affleck (43,400) in 59th, although they will all face an uphill battle tonight to take the gold bracelet.

However, other well known players bit the dust on the first day and include Team PokerStars Pros Jason Mercier, of the USA, online poker sensation Randy Lew, Britain’s Liv Boeree, Costa Rican Humberto Brenes and American David Williams, as well as Amarillo Slim, Hoyt Corkins, Kathy Liebert, Erick Lindgren, Michael Mizrachi and Tom Dwan.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see a final table tonight, but the field should be reduced to only a few tables by the end of play.

Top 10 chip leaders after day one of the 2011 WSOP $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event:

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