What started off as a day of anxiety with talk of a potential £250,000 overlay in the 2014 partypoker WPT UK Main Event ended with elation as 239 entries were taken on Day 1b of the £1 million guaranteed event, leaving a shortfall of only £1,000. However, the massive and ambitious guarantee will be hit on Thursday because several players have confirmed they are to buy in before late registration closes at 13:00 GMT.
Those players buying in late will sit down with a healthy stack of 30 big blinds, which gives them plenty of room to manoeuvre. They’ll have to play their A-game if they want to catch the tournament’s chip leader, local player Fred Wise who ended the second starting flight with a huge stack containing 215,100 chips, enough to top the overall chip counts.
Wise was flying under the radar for much of Day 1b, but shot into the lead when he was paid off by online superstar Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis when Wise flopped quad threes on a [Jx][3x][3x][Jx][7x] board. While Lewis was heading into the cold Nottingham air, Wise got to work stacking up more than 200,000 chips, which puts him in pole position going into Day 2 on November 20.
WPT L.A. Poker Classic champion Chris Moorman and Renee Xie
Fourteen other players headed home for some much needed rest safe in the knowledge they had tuned their 30,000 starting stack into more than 100,000 chips. The likes of Pratik Ghatge (173,400), World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic champion Chris Moorman (165,200), Tamer Kamel (149,200), and former World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event finalist Sylvain Loosli (132,000) being a quartet of big stacks to look out for on Day 2.
Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott progressed to Day 2
Day 1b was the start day of choice for some of the biggest names in poker such as Tom Middleton (102,500), Ben Warrington (88,900), Christopher Brammer (88,800), Simon Deadman (82,200), Ilan Boujenah (66,900), Stephen Chidwick (65,400), David Vamplew (62,600), Jon Spinks (56,000), the legendary Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott (56,000), Antoine Saout (53,700), Ludovic Geilich (45,100), Craig McCorkell (37,500), Gaelle Baumann (32,300), Sofia Lovgren (31,900), Ben Vinson (17,800) and Luca Moschitta (14,800) all managing to navigate their way through the shark-infested waters to book their place on Day 2’s roster.
2014 partypoker WPT UK Day 1b Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fred Wise | 215,100 |
| 2 | Pratik Ghatge | 173,400 |
| 3 | Chris Moorman | 165,200 |
| 4 | Matas Cimbolas | 152,100 |
| 5 | Tamer Kamel | 149,200 |
| 6 | Marco Dellla Tommasina | 136,900 |
| 7 | William Chattaway | 134,200 |
| 8 | Sylvain Loosli | 132,000 |
| 9 | Nic Markou | 130,400 |
| 10 | Caicai Huang | 110,100 |
Day 2 commences at 13:00 GMT and sees the 171 players who made it through from the two starting flights combine with anyone willing to take advantage of the late registration period. With such luminaries as Sam Trickett, Dominik Nitsche, Toby Lewis, JP Kelly, Roberto Romanello and Jake Cody among the fallen, there is every chance that those 171 survivors are going to be battling it out with even more talent come kickoff.
Royal Flush Girls Violet Dillon and Dalia Gutierrez with the Champions Cup
Qualify For WPT Fallsview
Has reading all about the 2014 partypoker WPT UK recently made you wish it were you who was competing for life-changing money in a World Poker Tour event? If so, you may want to check out the satellite tournaments feeding into the WPT Fallsview in Canada, which are currently in the partypoker lobby where you can win WPT Fallsview package for as little as a $5 outlay, can you imagine how awesome that would be?
We will be at WPT Fallsview, will you?
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