The World Poker Tour continues forward into the “brave new world” of post-COVID tournament poker, and it seems the rest of the poker community is ready to come along. The sheer number of players ended up crushing the guarantee at the WPT Venetian in Las Vegas before the dinner break on Friday night. On Saturday, it was simply a question of how high the prize pool would go.

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Nearly 1000 Entry Field

378 entries came to the felt Day 1A and, as per usual on multi-Day One events, the final day turned out to be monstrous. From the start this was evident as 272 were on the tournament clock, besting the 123 that were seated for action on Friday. These numbers kept climbing as the action continued Saturday.

By the time that dinner rolled around, 448 entries were in the books for Day 1B, and they did not stop coming through the doors. When late registration/re-entry ended after Level 9, 559 entries were totaled to make for a 937-entry field. The resulting prize pool was nearly triple the guaranteed prize pool at the start of the tournament.

The total prize pool ended up at $4,333,625, a stunning total especially after the year-long slumber of tournament poker. 118 players will eventually end up with a piece of that pie and a new entry on their Hendon Mob resume, but the final table will be where the real money is at. The entirety of the six-handed final table will earn a six-figure payday, with the eventual champion walking off with their name on the WPT Mike Sexton Champions’ Cup and $752,880 in their bank account.

Poker Tournaments In

Danny Wong Takes Day 1B Lead, But It Isn’t Enough

With so many players in the arena (not to mention unlimited reentries), the chips were certainly flying throughout The Venetian. WPT Champions’ Club member Tony Sinishtaj took big chunks of chips off two players without a showdown as others around the room jockeyed for position. In another clash, Quorban Mirza saw his Q-J miraculously turn into two pair by the river to eliminate Jesse Lonis and his pocket Kings to shoot into the momentary lead.

Danny Wong never got on the radar of anyone in the tournament room, but he would prove to be the one people should have been watching. He gradually increased his stack through the day, instead of making flashy all-in plays that drew the attention of those around the felt. It proved to be the best course of action as he would end up the day with the chip lead as the only player over 500K in chips.
1. Danny Wong, 520,000
2. Jeff Hong, 478,500
3. Don Nguyen, 432,000
4. Ken Einiger, 391,000
5. Jose Wong, 387,000
6. Ricky Nguyen, 381,500
7. George Wolff, 378,000
8. Jack Hardcastle, 359,000
9. Alex Keating, 344,000
10. Antonios Roungeris, 338,500
Despite his best efforts, Wong will not be the overall chip leader heading to Day 2 on Sunday. That is still Dustin Dirksen, who will head our highly unofficial Day 2 leaderboard:
1. Dustin Dirksen, 566,000*
2. Danny Wong, 520,000
3. Jeff Hong, 478,500
4. Don Nguyen, 432,000
5. Ken Einiger, 391,000
6. Joseph Cheong, 390,500*
7. Jose Wong, 387,000
8. James Carroll, 386,500*
9. Dave Alfa, 382,000*
10. Ricky Nguyen, 381,500
(* – Day 1A Players)
There will be several players who will not be amongst the survivors after busting out on Day 1B. Jeremy Kottler, Jean ‘Prince’ Gaspard, Dylan Wilkerson (coolered by the pocket Queens of Chad Holloway when he held pocket Jacks), and Asher Conniff found their way to the rails late on Saturday night. But there will be plenty of competition left over the next few days.

224 players remain from the 937-entry field and they will return on Sunday for the Day Two festivities. The first feat to achieve will be popping the money bubble at 118 players, which will earn the min-cash of $8365 for the first departures. The final table of the tournament is to be played on Tuesday, currently sans live streaming or any television taping.

The coronavirus outbreak led to an abrupt halt of live tournament poker action in March of 2020. While the global poker circuit effectively ceased all operations over the course of just a few days, the return of tournament action is likely to be much more gradual.

The first major poker room in the world to reopen its doors was the King’s Casino Rozvadov, which is one of the largest rooms in Europe. It resumed operations on May 11, nearly two months after it first announced a temporary closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cards were in the air in Rozvadov for two weeks before the venue hosted their first live tournament series, called The Big Week, which ran from May 25 – 31. The venue has continued to offer a selection of smaller daily tournaments and short series since resuming tournament action in late May.

Stateside, a number of poker rooms also resumed operations with only cash games available at first. Casinos in Florida began reopening in late May, including Derby Lane in St. Petersburg, the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa, and bestbet Jacksonville and bestbet Orange Park.

The Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, which resumed operations on June 12, recently announced that they would resume spreading select daily tournaments on June 23, after having first reopened on May 21. Derby Lane resumed spreading tournament events on June 6. Both venues currently include a maximum number of participants for their events.

“We are going to start offering tournaments again in July,” bestbet Director of Poker Jesse Hollander told Card Player. “We will likely have three tournaments a week in Jacksonville and two a week at Orange Park, no-limit hold’em tournaments with buy-ins of $60 and $150. We will offer those in July, and hopefully will offer more starting in August.”

The Las Vegas strip reopened on June 4, and with it three poker rooms resumed operations: The Venetian Poker Room (pictured above before the outbreak), the Orleans Poker Room and the South Point Poker Room. The Golden Nugget followed suit a couple days later, and three more rooms opened on June 18 at Bellagio, Caesars Palace, and Sahara. The Venetian was the first to announce a return to multi-table tournament action. The room will host two $250 buy-in no-limit hold’em shootout events, with one each on June 19 and June 20, with an eighty-player cap for the field and an 11:00 a.m. start time.

The events will have a maximum of five players per table, and will follow the shootout format that sees each table play down to a winner before moving on to the next round. The second round will shift to four-handed action, with the winners from those tables combining onto the final table of four to play down to a champion.

Poker Tournaments Coming Up

While these rooms and others around the country, and the world, have just begun to host live poker tournaments again, no major poker tours have yet announced the resumption of their publicly released schedules.

Free Poker Tournaments

“I believe to have large scale multi-table tournaments [running again], the most important thing is that some restrictions have to be lifted,” said World Poker Tour Executive Tour Director Matt Savage. “Travel restrictions so that players can attend, capacity restrictions so that tournaments don’t have to be capped, and player per table restrictions so that tournaments can be played more than six-handed so that the properties that are open are fine with giving up cash games to run less profitable tournaments while maximizing attendance.”

Savage spoke to Card Player about the Coronavirus’ impact on the live tournament scene back in late April. In that discussion, he highlighted the most important factor for himself and other tournament organizers: the wellbeing of those involved in putting on and playing in potential events.

“The top priorities for us are to make sure that the players are safe and make sure our staff are safe,” said Savage.