Registration has formally closed within the $1,100 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) Prime Championship. One document has been set with a second one virtually falling.
Day 1d on Wednesday at Wynn Las Vegas had 3,866 entries, bringing the event’s complete as much as 9,691. The occasion is formally the second largest $1,000 buy-in or greater event in dwell poker historical past outdoors of the World Sequence of Poker (WSOP). The most important? Final 12 months’s WPT Prime Championship, which noticed 10,512 entrants chase WPT glory. Calvin Anderson, a five-time bracelet winner, outlasted that huge discipline for $1,386,280.
Historical past within the Making
Matt Savage, the WPT’s government tour director, advised PokerNews previous to the beginning of the WPT Prime Championship that he was hopeful the event would match final 12 months’s record-setting turnout. However he expressed cautious optimism.
That document did not fall, however World Poker Tour historical past was nonetheless made. Day 1d’s session of three,866 entrants is the most important beginning flight within the WPT’s 22-year historical past.
WPT Prime Day 1 by the Numbers
The sector has included plenty of WPT champions, WSOP bracelet winners, poker legends, mid-stakes grinders, and hundreds of leisure gamers. Brandon Cantu, Jeremy Becker, Nick Yunis, Steven Jones, and Pat Lyons have been among the many huge stacks by means of the primary three Day 1 beginning flights. Day 1d was nonetheless underway on the time of publishing. Chip counts will likely be obtainable by early Thursday morning.
As for the defending champion, Anderson, he bagged 505,000 chips on Day 1b, good for 50 huge blinds and a barely above common stack. Anderson has over $6 million in dwell event cashes, in accordance with The Hendon Mob, and received his fifth WSOP title this previous summer time within the $10,000 Eight-Sport Combine occasion ($413,446).
Day 1d has seen quite a few high-profile gamers within the discipline. Many gamers who have been unable to bag in the course of the first three flights returned to the Wynn-Encore conference heart for one final shot. World champs Joe McKeehen and Ryan Riess have been amongst those that have fired a number of bullets on this historic occasion, the previous sitting on a giant stack on the time of publishing, whereas the latter was nursing a small stack.
Michael Ruane, who completed fourth within the 2016 WSOP Most important Occasion after which tenth the next 12 months, had a tough session on Day 1c however returned to the very same desk on Wednesday and has constructed up a large stack. Matt Salsberg, Lara Eisenberg, Tony Miles, and reigning WPT Participant of the Yr Bin Weng have been additionally within the last Day 1 flight.
Payouts will likely be posted on WPT.com later this night.
*Photos courtesy of World Poker Tour.
