Mike Matusow, Mark Seif atop WPT Festa al Lago Leaderboard

The World Poker Tour (WPT) kicked into action once again on Wednesday with the first five rounds of play in the 2009 Festa al Lago Championship Event, a $15,000 buy-in tournament at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

The tournament, the fourth stop on the Season 8 schedule for the WPT, was in danger of being one of the lowest attended events since the inception of the tour. During much of Festa al Lago schedule at the Bellagio, tournaments were significantly smaller than in past years due to the continuing strains of the economy on the bankrolls of some of the biggest players in the game. For example, Full Tilt Poker’s head man Howard Lederer was able to capture the $5,000 Festa al Lago HORSE Championship, but the field only contained 19 players and only paid the top three. Thus, there was a great deal of concern when the cards hit the air at Noon local time on Wednesday.

As play began, the original registration list only contained 179 entrants after the first half-level of play. It was decided at this point by Bellagio and WPT officials to introduce a radical remedy to accommodate for the largest field possible: late registrations would be extended until the end of the eighth level of play, meaning that the true field size would not be known until around 5:00pm Thursday. Therefore, the players in the field on Wednesday, set to play five levels in the Fontana Lounge at the Bellagio, wouldn’t truly know the field size until the next day.

This extension of the registration, the latest it has ever gone in a major poker tournament, introduced some new challenges to the players who were already in the event. Instead of chipping down players who register late, anyone who buys in prior to the end of Level 8 will receive a full complement of chips (60,000, or four times the buy-in).

With the announcement of late registration, many players decided to wait until Thursday to step into the fray at the Festa al Lago. Ultimate Bet’s Phil Hellmuth, after hearing of the late registration rules, decided not to show up to the first day of action at the Bellagio and will wait until Thursday to mount his assault on the WPT title. Even without “The Poker Brat” on the felt, 244 players were accounted for by the end of the day and every table was a minefield of top professionals.

Top pros who started the day on Wednesday, but were unable to stick around for its entirety, included the Mizrachi brothers (Michael and Robert), David Benyamine, Joe Sebok, and PokerStars’ Daniel Negreanu. Making his first appearance at a poker tournament since he made the WSOP “November Nine,” Phil Ivey patiently played through the day and will start on Thursday with slightly over 83,000 in chips. He will be a part of the 195 survivors of the first five levels who will be chasing top players Mike Matusow (224,000) and Mark Seif (slightly over 222,000).

Satellites continued to run through the early morning hours at the Bellagio to create the largest field possible and will probably be in action right up to the final gun. Poker News Daily will have all the information, including the final count on Thursday, as the WPT’s Festa al Lago plays down to a champion on October 26th.