Day 1 has come to a close at the World Poker Tour Fallsview Poker Classic $5,000 buy-in Main Event in Niagara Falls, Canada and 119 have advanced from the 419 that entered. The leader at the end of play is Andrew Pantling (pictured) with 384,200.
Other top stacks include Shannon Shorr (337,800), George Gaffiero (285,800), Faisal Khan (262,800), Sylvain Siebert (259,300), and WPT Season XIII Player of the Year points leader Darren Elias (245,300).
Many of the 18 partypoker Qualifiers didn’t make it through to Day 2, but Kenneth Kull, Julian Thomas, Wesley Michael Wyvill did advance. They will be joined on Saturday by such notables as Jared Jaffee, Jonathan Duhamel, Garett Greer, Andy Frankenberger, Mike Leah, Anthony Zinno, Christian Harder, Matt Marafioti, WPT Alpha8 Commentator Olivier Busquet, Victor Ramdin, and Ryan Riess.
Since this is the one and only starting flight in the tournament the prize pool was released tonight and it stands at CAD $1,910,221. The top 54 players will take home at least CAD $8,697 and the winner will take home CAD $380,021 and the USD $15,400 WPT Championship seat at the conclusion of the tournament on Monday.
The field was loaded with notables today but there were many that didn’t make it through the day. The fallen included Jeff Gross, Mike Linster, Nenad Medic, Will Failla, Amir Babakhani, Eric Afriat, Mike McDonald, and Curt Kohlberg.
Tune back in tomorrow at noon ET for live coverage of this televised WPT event in the province of Ontario in Canada.