Jason Koon Leads the Day 1 Field While Erkut Yilmaz Leads the POY Race

Photo:  Chipleader Jason Koon

Season XVII of the World Poker Tour is in the home stretch, as the WPT ARIA Summer Championship is the final tournament of the season before the Baccarat Crystal WPT Tournament of Champions. That means this is also the last chance for players to earn points in the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race.

There were 140 entries on Day 1, and registration remains open with unlimited re-entries until 3:30 pm tomorrow on Day 2. This was one of the toughest fields of the season, and there were 27 members of the WPT Champions Club in attendance.

After playing eight one-hour levels, a little more than half of the field (78 players) survived, and the big stack belonged to Jason Koon with 212,800 (213 big blinds).

Koon’s day was split in two, with the first half coming to an end in Level 4 when he got it all in with against the of Noah Schwartz after a flop of . Koon was a big favorite to double up, but the fell on the turn to knock Koon out on a bad beat.

After a short break, Koon returned to fire a second bullet, and this time he quickly built up his stack to spend the second half of the day at or near the top of the leaderboard.

The full list of official chip counts can be found on our Chip Counts page, and the official seat draw for Day 2 can be found at the bottom of this post. Here’s a look at the top 10 on the leaderboard heading into Day 2:

1.  Jason Koon  –  212,800  (213 bb)
2.  Ryan Laplante  –  163,000  (163 bb)
3.  Tobias Ziegler  –  160,000  (160 bb)
4.  Keith Lehr  –  152,600  (153 bb)
5.  James Romero  –  145,000  (145 bb)
6.  Tanveer Dhanjal  –  142,600  (163 bb)
7.  Matthew Wantman  –  140,500  (141 bb)
8.  Joshua Ray  –  134,200  (134 bb)
9.  Jim Collopy  –  133,100  (133 bb)
10.  Antonios Roungeris  –  129,400  (129 bb)

Photo:  Erkut Yilmaz is the player to beat in the Season XVII Hublot WPT Player of the Year race.

The Hublot WPT Player of the Year award will be determined by the end of this tournament, and POY points leader Erkut Yilmaz (who won two WPT titles this season) is here to defend his lead. There are six other players who survived Day 1 with a chance to catch him, but as long as Yilmaz is still alive, he controls his own destiny.

A min-cash is worth 50 POY points, and a victory will be worth either 1,000 or 1,200 points, depending on the prizepool. (Click here to see the POY point scale.)

Here are the seven contenders currently in the field battling for the POY title, along with their POY point totals. (Keep in mind that other contenders may still enter before registration closes.)

Erkut Yilmaz  –  2,300 pts
Dylan Linde  –  2,150 pts
Ping Liu  –  2,000 pts
Jake Schwartz  –  1,725 pts
Anthony Zinno  –  1,400 pts
Frank Stepuchin  –  1,350 pts
Ray Qartomy  –  1,350 pts

Day 2 begins tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12:00 noon PDT, and the official seat draw can be found below. Return to WPT.com for continuing coverage of the WPT ARIA Summer Championship.

Day 2 Seat Draw:

30-1
30-2  Keith Lehr  –  152,600
30-3  Brent Roberts  –  20,200
30-4  Kevin Eyster  –  89,100
30-5  Denys Shafikov  –  36,000
30-6  Robert Lofaso  –  16,700
30-7  Larry Ormson  –  88,400
30-8  Jake Schwartz  –  71,100
30-9  Tanveer Dhanjal  –  142,600

31-1
31-2  Noah Schwartz  –  42,400
31-3  Antonios Roungeris  –  129,400
31-4  Ozgur Arda  –  89,200
31-5  James Romero  –  145,000
31-6  Bobby Suer  –  61,800
31-7  Olivier Busquiet  –  28,700
31-8  Frank Crivello  –  115,000
31-9  Gueorgui Gantchev  –  22,000

34-1
34-2  Joonhee Yea  –  73,800
34-3  Aram Zobian  –  115,300
34-4  Seth Davies  –  106,900
34-5
34-6  Frank Stepuchin  –  39,100
34-7  Siyoung Lee  –  78,800
34-8  Daniel Shak  –  98,200
34-9  Joshua Ray  –  134,200

35-1
35-2  Byron Kaverman  –  44,400
35-3  Lauren Roberts  –  44,800
35-4  Matthew Wantman  –  140,500
35-5  Jake Schindler  –  28,100
35-6  Shankar Pillai  –  32,700
35-7  Jeremy Ausmus  –  80,000
35-8  Tobias Ziegler  –  160,000
35-9  Ryan Remington  –  56,500

36-1
36-2  Dylan Wilkerson  –  2,600
36-3  Thomas Winters  –  32,200
36-4  Chance Kornuth  –  63,800
36-5
36-6  Erkut Yilmaz  –  110,900
36-7  Tyler Cornell  –  11,800
36-8  Joseph Orsino  –  32,300
36-9  Christopher Macfarland  –  46,000

37-1
37-2  Ricky Guan  –  13,500
37-3  Ping Liu  –  97,900
37-4  Ralph Wong  –  85,900
37-5  Ali Imsirovic  –  18,500
37-6  Justin Bonomo  –  86,200
37-7  Joey Weissman  –  93,800
37-8  Liv Boeree  –  89,800
37-9  Dominik Nitsche  –  35,600

38-1
38-2  Larry Greenberg  –  101,800
38-3  Andrew Lichtenberger  –  26,100
38-4  Art Papazyan  –  63,600
38-5  Ryan Laplante  –  163,000
38-6  Dylan Linde  –  77,400
38-7  Milos Skrbic  –  75,100
38-8  Kitty Kuo  –  74,500
38-9  Matthias Eibinger  –  96,800

39-1
39-2  Yan Shing Tsang  –  64,400
39-3  Anthony Zinno  –  37,200
39-4  Jason Koon  –  212,800
39-5  Ray Qartomy  –  41,100
39-6  Marvin Rettenmaier  –  8,100
39-7  Don Vu  –  109,400
39-8  Daniel Strelitz  –  108,500
39-9  Gregory Goldberg  –  45,600

40-1
40-2  Steve Zolotow  –  83,200
40-3  Barry Hutter  –  49,100
40-4  Cary Katz  –  99,800
40-5  Manig Loeser  –  71,100
40-6  Markus Gonsalves  –  46,300
40-7  Jim Collopy  –  133,100
40-8  Igor Kurganov  –  10,500
40-9  Jonathan Little  –  86,700

41-1
41-2  Justin Young  –  36,300
41-3  Aaron Mermelstein  –  55,500
41-4  Ankush Mandavia  –  105,000
41-5  Brian Yoon  –  70,200
41-6  Johannes Becker  –  12,100
41-7  Alex Condon  –  62,800
41-8  Shannon Shorr  –  50,800
41-9  Taylor Paur  –  23,900

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive.com

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