The Big One For One Drop Begins Today

July 1st, 2012 | 11:20 am

The $1 million buy-in "Big One For One Drop" charity WSOP event begins on Sunday, July 1st. Check out the complete list of 48 players who will be participating.

By Matt Kaufman, Rakeback.com Poker News Editor

Today, the World Series of Poker is holding the largest buy-in poker tournament in history. The "Big One For One Drop" has a $1 million entry fee and $111,111 of each buy-in goes directly to One Drop - a charity dedicated to bringing clean water to poor areas of the world.

The event has a cap at 48 players, and all 48 spots have been taken. Whoever wins the event will win a record-setting $18,346,673 first-place prize and a platinum WSOP bracelet.

Some of the participants are independently wealthy while others proved themselves through live tournaments or playing online, and thus they were able to find backing for the $1 million.

The 48 players (in alphabetical order by last name) are:

Bobby Baldwin
Frederic Banjout
Bob Bright
Ilya Bulychev
Roland De Wolfe
Tom Dwan
Jonathan Duhamel
David Einhorn
Antonio Esfandiari
Phil Galfond
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier
Philipp Gruissem
Giovanni "Malibu" Guarascio
Gus Hansen
Phil Hellmuth
Phil Ivey
Eugene Katchalov
Cary Katz
Jens Kyllonen
Guy Laliberte
Ben Lamb
Tom Marchese
Jason Mercier
Michael Mizrachi
John Morgan
Daniel Negreanu
Paul Newey
Chamath Palihapitiya
Bill Perkins
Vivek Rajkumar
Brian Rast
Tobias Reinkemeier
Andrew Robl
Phil Ruffin
Rick Salomon
Nick Schulman
Noah Schwartz
Erik Seidel
Mike Sexton
Dan Shak
Talal Shakerchi
Mikhail Smirnov
Justin Smith
Brandon Steven
Sam Trickett
Haralobos Voulgaris
Richard Yong

On the first two days of the event (Sunday, July 1st and Monday, July 2nd), a live stream at WSOP.com will show the action at a featured table. Day 1 will begin at 1:11 pm PST (9:11pm GMT).