By Lisa Yiasemides
It has been a thrilling week, with two WPT Champions crowned, and this week three more will emerge with the final Championship events of the series taking place. With so much on the horizon, last night’s scheduled offered a little breather between the two huge weeks. Just three events were on the menu, as three two-day Weekender events kicked off with their first Day 1 flights.
Continues tonight
$1,050 7-Max Weekender PKO ($500K GTD)
The Weekender events have typically seen the smallest field sizes on Fridays when Day 1a has taken place. Last night was consistent with that, with an intimate field of 61 involved in the main event.
By the end of 18 20-minute levels, just four players were still standing and Sweden’s Ludvig Lindström has set the bar, taking 2,442,608 chips through. He eclipsed the rest of the survivors by a million chips and banked a very healthy $3,718 in bounties along the way after eliminating six opponents. His huge stack will be worth 174 big blinds when he returns to play levels of 7,000/14,000 1,750 ante.
Second place finisher Joel Dias (1,467,996) eliminated more of the competition, with nine players KO’d during the six and a half hours of play. His bounty winnings total $2,250 so far, which is more than double the cost of the buy-in. Mahmood Mohebshahedin (1,095,788, $1,312) and Anton Yakuba (1,093,608, $1,625) also return in the black after eliminating four and five opponents, respectively.
Anton Yakuba
It wasn’t such a good night for Lars Kamphues who was the last player to leave before the clock was paused. The German missed out on bounty value too, failing to eliminate any of his opponents by the end. partypoker’s Dzmitry Urbanovich (6th, $250), Nicholas Romanello (12th, $500), Paul Höfer (14th, $0), Arnaud Enselme (16th, $0), Daniel Colpoys (17th, $250) and WPTDeepStacks Champion Firoz ‘Mohamed’ Mangroe (18th, $0) were some of the other notable casualties.
All is not lost though, as there are still two opportunities to get back in the game with Day 1b on the schedule tonight at 7:05 pm (BST). Then on Sunday, September 20, at 4:05 pm, a turbo Day 1c flight will take place ahead of Day 2 at 7:05 pm that evening.
$109 Mini 7-Max Weekender PKO ($200K GTD)
Hans Jørgen Jochumsen was the only player to eclipse the two-million mark. The Dane takes through 2,410,446, significantly ahead of Stephen Brown (1,716,303) chip count-wise but not in bounties, with Jochumsen collecting $175 compared to Brown’s $274.
The blinds were slightly shorter in this event, with 15-minute levels and a total of 18 levels paid. By the end of them, 62 players had made it through of the 440 starters. Among them will be Karl Heinz Muller (1,622,042, $125), UK grinder Stewart Kirby (1,494,868, $387) and Mario Juste Sanchez (1,458,180, $175) who all did well to reach the top five.
Anton Yakuba (633,168) survived this event too, placing 29th and winning $25 via one knockout. He will be joined by other well-known players including Alexandr Merzhvinskiy (31st, 576,570, $193) and Adam Hendrix (35th, 546,025, $200). Ciaran Duffy will need to jump in one of the subsequent flights should he want to stay in contention after busting just before time was called.
As with its big brother, blinds will resume at Level 19 (7,000/14,000 1,750) and Day 1b and the Turbo Day 1c flights take place at the same times.
$11 Micro 7-Max Weekender PKO ($50K GTD)
A total of 1,313 entries were counted in the micro event. With 15-minute levels in this edition too, it took five hours for the tournament to complete 18 levels and by the end of them, 155 progressed to the second stage of the competition.
Faring particularly well was chip leader Louis Vieira whose 3,256,238-chip stack will be worth a staggering 232 big blinds when Day 2 starts. He also banked $42 in bounties. Eric Batista came close to matching Vieira, almost exceeding 3 million chips too. His 2,963,508 chips are good for second place, plus he picked up $36 from knockouts.
All of the other top five finishers accumulated over 2 million chips as well: Mario Marjanovic (2,244,002, $31), Michel Golfe (2,189,923, $35) and Joshua Stewart (2,028,405, $26) all return chipped up for Day 2.
Tonight’s schedule
As well as Day 1b in the three Weekender comps, there are five one-day events taking place this evening, including a $10,300 High Roller, two 8-Max tournaments and Main and Mini 6-Max Turbo PKO events to look forward to. The biggest highlight of all is Day 1a of Event #10: $25,500 High Roller Championship, which has an enormous $5 million guarantee!
