The finale of the World Poker Tour’s Season XI schedule, the 2013 WPT Championship, is underway at the Bellagio in Las Vegas with a small but strong opening Day One now in the books.
The $25,000 buy in event, while it might have lacked in numbers for its start at noon on Saturday, didn’t lack for quality on the tables. Along with the champions from the Season XI schedule that included current WPT Player of the Year leader Matt Salsberg, Paul Klann, defending WPT World Champion Marvin Rettenmaier, Noah Schwartz and WeiKai Chang, such notables as Tom Marchese, Dan Shak, Daniel Negreanu, Jake Cody and Barry Schulman (who used a satellite to get into the tournament with his wife Allyn) were at the tables from the opening gun. With a 100K starting chip stack, the play was predictably measured from the beginning.
Five 90-minute levels were the plan of action for the day as those gathered began the fight for the WPT Championship crown. A couple of pros, Cody and Dominik Nitsche, got off to difficult starts. Nitsche, in particular, battled against Joseph Ruzick on a 7♠ 5♦ 2♠ 3♠ A♣ board. After betting out on the river, Nitsche saw Ruzick pump the action up to 40K, which Nitsche couldn’t bring himself to call. Courteously, Ruzick showed Nitsche his A♠ J♠ for the nut flush and moved up to 132K in chips, while the WPT Africa champion dropped down to 73K.
As the second level of the day started, 74 players were in their seats and more were flooding into the Bellagio tournament room. Guillaume Darcourt, Antonio Esfandiari, Will Failla and Ravi Raghavan took their chairs while Cliff Josephy commented over Twitter about his difficult table. “Have @EdogPoker (Erik Lindgren) to my left and @luckychewy (Andrew Lichtenberger) to my right,” Josephy chirped over Twitter. “@JeremyAusmus moved off the table.”
One of the first eliminations of the day occurred after a matchup between Mohsin Charania and Shak. After a pre-flop bet from Charania, Shak three-bet the play to 3500 and Charania called to see a 6-3-3 flop hit the felt. Shak opened up the betting, but Charania pushed it up to 15K in an attempt to put some pressure on Shak. Undaunted, Shak four bet to 35K and Charania, just as unfazed, moved all in. Shak would say he was mucking Kings as Charania received the pot and, moments later, would bust out and immediately use his one rebuy option to get back in the tournament.
Chang also would depart before the end of the Level 2, but Cody was storming up the leaderboard. As Level 3 began (with 97 entries), Cody was north of the 200K level and would maintain that standard through much of the remainder of the day’s play. He was joined in that rarefied air by fellow pros Josephy, Rettenmaier, Negreanu, Darcourt, Marchese and John Hennigan, but it would be Failla making the most of his late entry into the tournament to seize the lead heading for Day Two:
1. Will Failla, 276,000
2. Jonathan Kamhazi, 273,300
3. Mike Linster, 269,000
4. Jeffrey Ishbia, 255,000
5. Cliff Josephy, 250,800
6. Jake Cody, 250,000
7. John Hennigan, 225,500
8. Arkadiy Tsinis, 222,100
9. Marvin Rettenmaier, 222,000
10. Amir Babakhani, 217,200
By the end of the Day One action, 113 entries had been received in the Bellagio’s cages and 93 players were remaining in the field. The final numbers are not yet known, however, due to late registration continuing on this afternoon until after Level 8’s completion (about 5PM Pacific Time). Players such as Dan O’Brien, Brian Rast, Jason Mercier and Phil Hellmuth have commented over various social media that they will be making their way to the Bellagio for Day Two’s noon starting time (with Mercier hopping an international flight to attempt to make the show) and it is expected that the total field size will top last year’s 152 entries.
