Poker Tournament Day 1

  

Online Poker Tournaments at BLITZPOKER. Many people think that you need money in huge amounts to play poker. But the truth is you don’t. Here in BLITZPOKER which is one of the most exciting online poker destinations, you can play freeroll poker tournaments and win a chance every day to win prize money. The bad news for Kiriopoulos is the Day 1 chip leader rarely wins lengthy, large-field tournaments. This year’s $10,000 buy-in WPT LA Poker Classic had 461 entries on Saturday. December 27 - 30, 2020 Join us for the first-ever online WPT Main Tour online event! The tournament kicks off with a $3,500 buy-in featuring a $1 million guaranteed prize pool. Wednesday, July 1, 2020 to Sunday, September 6, 2020 WSOP.com / GGPoker.com.

The final World Poker Tour Main Event of 2019 got underway Monday with Day 1 of the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. That’s right, Day 1. Not Day 1A. One of the longest standing events of the poker calendar does not have multiple flights, as we see in most major tournaments. This is likely because it is also one of the only WPT events that has maintained its $10,000 buy-in, thus attracting fewer players. Day 1 drew 705 entries, beating last year’s mark by eight. Players can enter or re-enter into the early levels of Day 2, so expect the overall total to increase.

Leading the 417 Day 1 survivors is Toby Boas with 280,400 chips. It’s quite a competitive race at the top of the leaderboard, with the usual disclaimer that there is a long way to go. Dominique Mosley has 262,000 chips and Stoyan Obreshkov is right behind him with 260,000. Six other players have over 200,000 chips.

Boas has just over $600,000 in lifetime live poker tournament earnings, with his largest cash of $143,012 coming from a third place finish in the WSOP Circuit Harrah’s Cherokee Main Event about a year ago. He has one cash on the main World Poker Tour.

Loads of recognizable names are still alive in the Five Diamond including former WPT announcer Mike Sexton, Brian Altman, Anthony Zinno, Sexton’s replacement Tony Dunst, Chris Moorman, and Victor Ramdin.

After this tour stop, that’s it for the World Poker Tour until January 2020. There are a slew of Main Tour events in the first month of the year, scattered all over the place. The first stays out west, with California playing host to the WPT Gardens Poker Championship. The following week, the WPT heads east to Florida for the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open. While that’s going on, players from across the Atlantic who don’t want to fly to the States can play in WPT Russia at Casino Sochi. And at the end of the month is the WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open in Atlantic City.

Poker Tournament Day 1 Games

Donald Maloney currently holds the lead in the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race with 1,300 points. Close behind are Aaron Van Blarcum with 1,275 and Geoffrey Hum with 1,250. The season does not end with the close of 2019; there is still are still five months to go before someone will be declared the Player of the Year.

Poker Tournament Day 1 Game

Tournament

2019 World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic – Day 1 Chip Leaders

  1. Toby Boas – 280,400
  2. Dominique Mosley – 262,000
  3. Stoyan Obreshkov – 260,000
  4. Mike Vanier – 235,300
  5. Jake Daniels – 227,500
  6. Jonathan Jaffe – 226,400
  7. Maria Ho – 207,500
  8. Simon Deadman – 206,000
  9. David McGowan – 201,800
  10. Vincas Tamasauskas – 197,600

The World Poker Tour is going “old school”this weekend, harkening back to the days when tournament poker was “may thebest man win” and you actually had to think about your actions! The WPT’syearly stop at the Commerce Casino for the 2020 WPT L. A. Poker Classic hasdrawn out the players once again as the turnstiles spun heading into the tournamentarena. After the initial day of battle Demo Kiriopoulos, who has been on a runof late, holds the chip lead as Day Two looms.

Do You Remember When?

Tournament

The WPT LAPC is a throwback to the waythat tournament poker USED to be played. There are no multiple Day Ones of play,there’s no “re-entry” into the tournament, you put up your $10,000 andliterally let the chips fall where they may. The players seem to desire thisformat as, through Day One on Saturday, 461 players stepped up for battle. Theone current change to tournament poker that WPT Executive Tournament DirectorMatt Savage has kept for the WPT LAPC is late registration, which will go onuntil the end of Level 11 this afternoon (approximately 3:30PM Pacific Time).

Starting with 40K in chips and facing eight,one-hour levels of play, the players didn’t want to waste a minute on thesidelines. When the call to “shuffle up and deal” was made, 227 players hadalready taken their seats on their personal patches of felt. This includedseveral top professionals including Kitty Kuo, Shaun Deeb, Maria Ho, KristenBicknell and WPT Champions’ Club members Dylan Wilkerson, Dylan Linde and LeeMarkholt.

While these players battled it out, asteady stream of players continued to flood the tournament battleground. AsLevel 3 of the eight planned on the day started, 362 players had stepped up withtheir $10K and dreams of grandeur. Defending champion David ‘ODB’ Baker was oneof these who joined the fray at this time, joined by Ryan Laplante, Anton Wiggand Baker’s fellow Champions’ Club member Aaron Van Blarcum.

Joseph Cheong either wasn’t into the freezeoutformat or had trouble adjusting his normal game to the LAPC format. He was partof the crowd who came in after Level 3, but he only lasted two and a half ORBITS(that’s roughly 23 hands, folks) before busting out in his one and only chance.‘Sublime’ tried to keep it light (maybe?), Tweeting to his followers:

Plenty of Carnage, Plenty of Success

Cheong wasn’t the only person to fallvictim to the “one and done” format for the WPT LAPC. Julien Martini, CordGarcia, Aaron Mermelstein, Nick Pupillo, Jean ‘Prince’ Gaspard, James Calderaro,Harrison Gimbel, Anthony Zinno, Andrew Lichtenberger, Andy Frankenberger anddefending GPI Player of the Year Alex Foxen all would find the exit before theend of the Day One action. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of successout in the crowd.

Kiriopoulos, who made the final table of the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic last month in defense of his 2019 championship before finishing in fifth place, steadily climbed his way through the field. Kiriopoulos admitted to the WPT Live Updates crew that he’s “playing really well,” as represented by the 255,600 in chips that he’s accumulated through the first eight levels of Day One. Much like that event in Fallsview, however, Kiriopoulos will have some serious competition amongst the 271 players that will come back to the felt (plus any late regging stragglers):

1. Demo Kiriopoulos, 255,600
2. Jordan Cristos, 210,300
3. Levon Khachatryan, 208,100
4. Danny Wong, 202,300
5. Kazuhiko Yotsushika, 192,400
6. Matthew Leecy, 183,200
7. Dylan Linde, 178,400
8. Ryan Laplante, 176,000
9. Yen Dang, 165,800
10. Barry Hutter, 163,700

Poker

Poker Tournament Day 1 2019

Lurking down the leaderboard are such players as Matas Cimbolas (163,000), Matt Affleck (143,700), Upeshka De Silva (139,800), and “blast from the past” Ted Forrest (135,200).

Poker Tournament Day 1 Day

The 271 players today still don’t know what they’re playing for as late registration is open until the conclusion of Level 11. This should guarantee that the field will crack the 500-player mark and ensure that the prize pool will crack the $5 million mark (last year’s event reached 546 players). There will be an extension to the time of the levels, too; instead of the one-hour levels of Day One, Day Two will feature five, 90-minute levels before play concludes for the night. By this point, we should have all the info on the prize pool, the number of players paid and what the eventual champion will walk away with, expected to be a million-dollar payday.