It’s starting to look like the $40 million guaranteed prize pool will be smashed in the World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas following a huge Day 1b session on Wednesday.
After 609 players entered Day 1a on Tuesday, another 730 showed up with $10,400 to register for the second opening flight, one of them being World Poker Tour host Lynn Gilmartin, who turned her 100,000 initial stack into 556,000. That puts the Australian poker personality among the top stacks out of the 265 who bagged on Day 1b.
Gilmartin ran deep in last year’s WPT World Championship, finishing in 91st place out of 2,960 for a career-best $36,500 score. Once again, she’s off to a strong start in one of the biggest poker tournaments of the year.
https://twitter.com/LynnGilmartin/status/1735209526117458328
Neff Leads Everyone
While Gilmartin’s stack is impressive, no one topped Peter Neff, who ended the session with 899,000 chips, approximately 150 big blinds. Kharlin Sued had the second biggest stack at 735,000, while Colton Blomberg sits in third place with 704,000.
https://twitter.com/CaitlinComeskey/status/1735194583691305092
Calvin Anderson, a four-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, is having quite a week. He’s locked up the second biggest stack out of six remaining players heading into the Dec. 19 WPT Prime Championship final table with more than $1 million to the winner. And on Wednesday, he bagged a healthy stack over 400,000.
There could be one minor issue for Anderson, however. Should he advance deep in the WPT World Championship, Day 5 just so happens to take place smack dab in the middle of the Prime final table. Matt Savage, the WPT’s executive tour director, assured PokerNews that the WPT would accommodate Anderson to ensure he could compete in both events should that situation arise.
Full chip counts will be available in the early morning.
In total, 1,339 players registered for the first two of four Day 1 starting flights, and 467 advanced. Jeff Hakim (998,000) remains the overall chips leader, while Alan Keating is right behind him with 957,000 chips.
Day 1c begins at 11 a.m. PT on Thursday, followed by Day 1d on Friday. Both sessions, especially Day 1c, are expected to attract massive fields.
*Image courtesy of World Poker Tour.