Bryan Johnson Bags Chip Lead as 24 Players Survive Day 1B Flight
Day 1b of the HPT St. Louis is now in the books. After 172 entries and 15 levels of play, 24 are moving on to Day 2.
The player leading the way at the end of Day 1b is Bryan Johnson, who bagged 454,00 and the biggest stack overall heading into Day 2. He doubled up early in Level 1 and never looked back, steadily building his stack throughout the day, which included a couple of monster pots.
Along with Johnson, Lisa Morrow-McBride (437,000), Nick Pupillo (375,000), Joshua Turner (374,000), and Gyan Gurung (373,000) rounded out the top five in chip stacks.
Other notables moving on to Day 2 include Steve Warren (328,000), Daniel Chambers (306,000), Cody Brinn (301,000), Jeff Brin (268,000), and Aaron Johnson (80,000).
The field had many of its usual familiar faces in Keith Heine, Ryan Gregor, Craig Casino, Dennis Phillips, Mike Rieck, John Richards, Chris Tryba, Edward Sebesta, Greg Wood, Stephen Green and two-time HPT champion Nick Davidson, to name a few. The ladies number was small but well-represented by the likes of Cheryl Choon, Lily Kiletto, Catherine Stahr, Lisa Morrow-McBride, Tricia Sweeney, Barbara Hunsel, Lori Lindley and Wendy Freedman.
Those were just a few of the players who came to take their shot, some more than once and like yesterday, today saw no shortage of action, which included early coolers and three-way all-ins. One of those hands included Dennis Phillips, Craig Casino, and Ryan Detmer. The three-way action ended with all the chips in the middle on the turn with Phillips holding a set of sevens, while both Casino and Detmer turned the gut-shot staright to eliminate Phillips from the tournament.
Some notable players to fall short of advancing include, Keith Heine, Dennis Phillips, Craig Casino, Craig Welko, Chris Tryba, John Richards, Jeff Fielder, Nick Davidson, and 2016 HPT Player of the Year Ryan Gregor, who was eliminated just moments before the night ended when he moved his remaining 37,000 in on an eight-high board holding eight-six suited and was called by Patrick Ray who had Gregor out-kicked holding eight-seven suited.
The final starting flight will kick-off tomorrow Saturday, August, 3rd at noon local time and will play another 15 levels. The surviving players from all three starting flights will combine at noon on Sunday, August 4th, to play down to the final table, which will be live-streamed Monday, August 5th starting at noon local time.
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