2015 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam Day 2: Guarantee Nearly Doubled, Johnson Leads
The third and fourth starting flights for the 2015 Seneca Niagara Falls Summer Slam Event #1: $200 No-Limit Hold'em concluded on Saturday, drawing 175 and 166 entries, respectively.
Day 1c was the biggest starting flight, and just 33 players survived through 14 levels of play. Blake Napierala grabbed the chip lead after a solid day of play that saw him build a big stack turning 6x2x into a full house, then using it to apply pressure to shorter stacks for the rest of the afternoon. In the end, he bagged a little over 200,000.
Day 1d was a star-studded affair with some of the area's best grinders firing away, including Andy Spears, Randy Pfeifer, and Travell Thomas. Hollywood actor and accomplished poker hobbyist Kirk Acevedo even added a little glitz to the event, building a big stack early, only to run bad late and eventually bust on Day 1d.
Thomas and Pfeifer also joined him on the rail, but Spears flirted with the chip lead all night long, eventually bagging a contending stack heading into Sunday's Day 2.
It was Vince Palma who busted Pfeifer, on what appeared to be his sixth bullet fired, and Palma rode that wave into a stack over 200,000, However, Charles Johnson won two races in the final level of the night to bag the Day 1d and overall chip lead on 244,200.
Combined Day 1c and 1d Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charles Johnson | 244,200 |
| 2 | Rick Block | 208,900 |
| 3 | Vince Palma | 203,500 |
| 4 | Blake Napierala | 202,500 |
| 5 | John Aga | 178,500 |
| 6 | William Ho | 168,500 |
| 7 | Rob Forbes | 145,900 |
| 8 | Michael Russo | 139,600 |
| 9 | Weiyi Mo | 135,300 |
| 10 | Joseph Elia | 133,600 |
Through the four starting flights, a total of 569 entries created a whopping $91,893 prizepool, almost doubling the event's $50,000 guarantee. The top 54 spots will get paid a min-cash of $395, and first-place will earn a healthy $21,137.
Thirty-three survived Day 1c and 26 survived this Day 1d. They will join the survivors from the other two starting flights for a total of 93 runners returning to play down to a champion beginning at 11 a.m. local time Sunday.
PokerNews' Live Reporting will resume from Western New York at that time, so stay tuned to our 2015 Seneca Summer Slam coverage.
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