Home / Poker News May 2012 / WPT World Championship – Day 1 Report
WPT World Championship – Day 1 Report
Posted by: Mark Baldwing - Mon, 2012-05-21 07:05
The WPT’s World Championship is definitely not a low-profile event. The $25k buy-in is quite a deterrent for everyone who is not dead-serious about his/her poker, so the starting fields are pretty much always made up of top-class professionals. Thus, the winner is always a top professional too. For instance, last year, Scott Seiver was the one who won, taking home the $1,618,344 top prize. This year, day 1 of the event drew 103 players so it was definitely a good day for the WPT. At the end of the first day, Steve O’Dwyer had the chip lead, having amassed a stack of 231k. Despite his impressive effort, O’Dwyer was unable to put any kind of distance between him and the rest of the field. He now has Masa Kagawa breathing down his neck, from behind a stack of 228.6k chips.
Due to the peculiar structure adopted by the WPT for the event, only a few players busted out on Day 1.
Most of O’Dwyer’s chips came during the third level of play. Some of them came from Lee Markholt and another player who played a massive 3-way pot which landed in O’Dwyer’s possession.
Guillaume Darcourt played on day 1, together with Jonathan Little, Michael Mizrachi, Daniel Negreanu and Nick Schulman. Isaac Haxton, Hafiz Khan, Vanessa Rousso and John Juanda saw action as well.
Daniel Negreanu survived the day, logging quite a few impressive plays along the way. One such play was a fold he made against Cliff Josephy. The
PokerStars pro finished the day with 127k chips, slightly more than the 100k he had started with.
Guillaume Darcourt and Vanessa Selbst both made the top 5. Darcourt finished 4th with 215.2k and Selbst ended up in 5th with 207.4k. Other notables who finished near the top were Joe Serock (6th place) Michael Mizrachi (7th place), Isaac Haxton (9th place) and Farzad Bonyadi (10th place).
