For the first time ever, players gathered at bestbet Jacksonville for a televised World Poker Tour event, turning out in droves from all over the world for a shot at getting their name engraved on the WPT Champions Cup. All in all, there were 320 entries into the event, generating a prizepool of $1,504,000 with $400,600 going to the eventual WPT Champion.
After several grueling days of poker, the WPT Jacksonville bestbet Open TV final table was set and featured some firsts of its own. For the first time, WPT Raw Deal analyst Tony Dunst was sitting at the poker table instead of in the WPT Live Stream booth for a WPT final table, and he was joined by James Calderaro and Shawn Cunix at their first WPT final tables.
Here are the chip counts when final table play started:
1. Shawn Cunix – 2,865,000
2. James Calderaro – 2,770,000
3. Will Failla – 1,905,000
4. Tony Dunst – 880,000
5. Darren Elias – 660,000
6. Daniel Buzgon – 500,000
And here’s what the chip counts were when Part 1 ended:
1. Shawn Cunix – 4,300,000
2. James Calderaro – 2,375,000
3. Darren Elias – 980,000
4. Daniel Buzgon – 960,000
5. Tony Dunst – 505,000
6. Will Failla – 460,000
At first glance, it may not look like it was a very eventful episode as no one busted and it looks like Cunix held onto the chip lead and steam rolled the table the whole time. However, that’s not the case, the chip lead changed hands multiple times with huge swings in the chip countys. Cunix, Calderaro and Elias all held the chip lead at one point during the episode. As you can imagine with that many lead changes, there were plenty of fireworks to be seen so far at this final table.
However, in one of the oddest moments from last night’s episode, it was more fizzle than fireworks as Will Failla misread his cards (or forgot what they were) and folded the winning hand against Tony Dunst. See video below:
We still have all six players at this final table, so expect next week’s episode to be action-packed as the players start to hit the rail and we get closer and closer to engraving a name on the WPT Champions Cup for the first time at bestbet Jacksonville.