24 left in WPT Rolling Thunder
The World Poker Tour (“WPT”) continues its California swing with a stop at Rolling Thunder where 465 entrants put up the $3,500 buy in, creating a prize pool of $1,488,000. After three days of play, 24 remain with Bryan Campanello holding the chip lead with 1.4 million in chips. Let’s take a look at how we got to this point:
Day 1A saw a slew of big names take part in the action including the likes of Jonathan Little, Amir Lehavot, Maria Ho, Matt Salsberg, Joe Serock, Jesse Sylvia, Scott Clements, Tony Dunst, Antonio Esfandiari, Shannon Shorr, and Phil Hellmuth who told tablemate Faraz Jaka that he would give him $100 if he whined at him more than once. JC Tran was proud of a WPT event being held in his back yard and took to Twitter to let everyone know.
Ahh yeah! Hometown @wpt @TVPokerRoom Never thought this would ever happen. #hometownfav #pumped #backyardpoker
— JC TRAN (@jctran23) March 15, 2014
Galen Hall would lead the way at the end of the day with 211K in chips with Tony Recchia (192K), David Miscikowski (189K), Calvin Anderson (187K), and Chris Hinchcliffe (186K) rounding out the top 5. Among those eliminated (but still with a chance due to this being a re-entry event) were Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Hellmuth (who made it through the day without having to ship Jaka $100), Brandon Cantu, Jeff Madsen, and Will Failla. Maria Ho would end the day with a comfortable 165K chip stack and was joined by other notables such as Marvin Rettenmaier (122K), David Tuthill (106K), John Racener (87K), Anthony Zinno (71K), Aaron Massey (64K), Candace Collins (60K), JC Tran (50K), and Matt Salsberg (36K).
Day 1B saw more big names show up, including many who had tried the day before. Among those taking part in the action were Faraz Jaka, Andy Frankenberger, Steve Sung, Makul Pahuja, Antonio Esfandiari (who would win a monster pot early on a K-2-2 board with pocket deuces against his opponent’s Kings), Matt Affleck, Garrett Greer, Ebony Kenney, Scott Clements, and the always entertaining Phil Hellmuth. Former WPT Player of the Year Joe Serock would end the day with the chip lead with 262K followed by Ben Zamani (238K) and David Forester (232K). Unfortunately the likes of Makul Pahuja, Will Failla, Jonathan Little, and Hellmuth would not be joining them in moving on to Day 2.
Out of the 465 entrants, 191 would return for action on Day 2. Early on we would see players like Tony Dunst, Marco Johnson, and Ludovic Lacay hit the rail well short of the money. Andrew Lichtenberger, Maria Ho, Lily Kiletto, Mohsin Charania, Linda Johnson, Candace Collins, and others would join those three in coming up short. Meanwhile, local hero JC Tran would make a move to the top of the leader board nearly quadrupling his stack in the first few hours of play. Marvin Rettenmaier would be down to just one big blind – an hour later that stack would hit almost 60 big blinds. Chip and a chair indeed. Unfortunately for Marvin he would bust just shy of making the money. Jordan Cristos would be the unfortunate 55th place finisher when his Ace-Queen lost to the Ace-King that Ken Jorgensen held. This meant that Allen Kessler had made the money, his 20th WPT cash, which was good for 2nd all time in the WPT record books. Kessler would end up finishing in 42nd place.
Players would fall fast after that. Nam Le would finish in 53rd, Robert Panitch in 46th, Brandon Cantu in 40th, Joe Serock in 39th, and Jesse Sylvia in 38th. The aforementioned Campanello would end with the chip lead with 1.436 million. Chad Eveslage is in 2nd with 1.39 million and Ben Zamani rounds out the top three with 1.35 million. Others in the final 24 are Ryan D’Angelo (751k), Michael Rocco (244K), J.C. Tran (278K), Ed Miller (232K), James Calderaro (686K), and Keven Stammen (453K). They will return today to play down to the final six.
COMMENTS