Home / Poker News May 2009 / Dwyte Pilgrim, Billy Kopp lead WSOP-C New Orleans after Day 1
Dwyte Pilgrim, Billy Kopp lead WSOP-C New Orleans after Day 1
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-05-20 12:39
Day 1 of the Bayou Poker challenge saw Billy Kopp from Kentucky clinch the top spot of the provisional leader board. He was followed by Dwyte Pilgrim, who was a massive 100,000 chips down on the leader.
The New Orleans WSOP-C event is the last one on the 2008-2009 schedule for the series. With the
WSOP just around the corner, the Bayou Poker Challenge (as the WSOP-C New Orleans stop is also known) represents the last warm-up possibility before the big one, as well as the last opportunity for players to round their bankrolls up for the WSOP buy-ins.
The 167 players who bellied up to the tables of the Harrah’s New Orleans Hotel and Casino coughed up $5,150 each to create a prize-pool of $809,950. The stakes were pretty high as the winner would earn not only a $211,722 first prize, but an entry to the WSOP Main Event as well, not to mention the championship ring. Due to the excellent value involved, the field was packed with amateurs, but pros showed up in considerable numbers as well. Michael Binger, Shaun Deeb, Dwyte Pilgrim, Kai Landry and David Woo were all there, among a bunch of other well known live players.
Kai Landry was one of the early casualties of the day and the early going didn’t prove easy for Dwyte Pilgrim either.
Pilgrim bled his 20,000 chip stack away in the beginning working it down all the way to 6,000 chips, before he got something going in the form of a more than welcome double-up against Seth Fischer. He picked up pocket Ks and got Fischer all in on his A,K. That momentum would carry Pilgrim on all the way to second place at the end of the day.
David Woo on the other hand didn’t encounter any such early hurdles. He stormed ahead of the pack and by the 5th level he had built up a 79,000-strong stack.
47 players were eliminated before the dinner break.
As the surviving field reconvened after the break, Pilgrim would take another crippling shot delivered by Shaun Deeb this time. Once again down to less than 10k, the New Yorker fired up the afterburners and hit a magic streak which had him back at 170,000 chips by the end of the day.
