LAS VEGAS — The main event of the World Series of Poker will likely last a few hours longer this year as players start the tournament with more chips.

Tournament director Jack Effel said Saturday that the series added chips to players' starting stacks this year to give them more time to size up the tables and maneuver during the tournament.

"It also gives the players a little more play time in the beginning, where a lot of the average players were feeling left out like they didn't get their money's worth," Effel said. "These first few days of the main event, it's all about survival — these guys just want to make it through the first day."

Shorter stacks relative to the minimum bets required force players into more hasty decisions for all their chips.

Players began this year's $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold'em main event with 30,000 in chips compared with 20,000 last year.

Effel said that on the tournament's first day on Friday, about 300 players were eliminated from the field of 1,116, about 30 percent of the field. Half the players were eliminated the day they started play last year, he said.

Joe Hachem, the 2005 main event champion, says more chips at the start give less aggressive players more time to pick their spots to play.

"I think the game has become so much more aggressive ... that as a good fold player having 30,000 chips gives you that little flexibility to play a few more pots," Hachem said. "There's a lot to be said for these young players who are aggressive and accumulate all those chips, but do they know how to change gears, do they know how to get to the final table and play solid poker without getting all those chips in there on a stone cold bluff?

"I don't think they do — I think that's their biggest weakness," he said.

But three-time gold bracelet winner Mike "The Mouth" Matusow says the structure will hurt players later in the tournament as minimum bets get higher.

"I can't see the structure not catching up to the chips on Day 6 or 7, when nobody's going to have more than eight bets in front of them, so that's something that they're going to have to worry about," Matusow said.

Matusow said that if tournament officials keep the chips at their current level next year, they should start the tournament with higher minimum bets.

On Saturday, 873 players entered the main event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, bringing the total number of entries for the first two days to 1,989.

Tournament officials expected the least number of players to enter Saturday because of the Independence Day holiday. The tournament was not on pace to match last year's numbers, when 6,844 players entered and generated a $9.15 million prize for winner Peter Eastgate.