Welcome to Day 1a of the 2019 HPT Season XV Championship at Hollywood Casino St. Louis!
Another successful season of the Heartland Poker Tour draws to a close this weekend, as the season-ending $2,500 Championship Event kicks off here at the Hollywood Casino St. Louis today at 2 p.m. local time with the first of three starting flights.
A generous $700,000 guaranteed prize pool awaits players, and those players will begin the day with 30,000 in starting chips. Blinds will be sixty-minutes in length for the duration of the tournament, and players will receive a fifteen-minute break at the conclusion of every two levels. A sixty-minute dinner break is scheduled at the completion of Level 6 each day, and late registration and a single re-entry option are available through the beginning of Level 9. Play will conclude at the completion of Level 10 or until 13% of the field remains, whichever comes first.
Day 1b will kick off on Saturday, November 23rd at Noon local time, with Day 1c concluding the opening flights on Sunday, November 24th at Noon. All players that manage to bag up a stack from the three starting flights will return on Monday, November 25th at 11 a.m. local time and play down to the televised final table of nine. Those nine players will return one final time on Tuesday, November 26th, and play down until a champion is crowned. You'll be able to follow all the action from the final table at the HPT's Twitch channel on Tuesday, as well.
In last year's Season XIV HPT Championship at Ameristar East Chicago, Wisconsin pro Josh Reichard notched the biggest win of his career, earning $221,294 after defeating Pittsburgh's Bobby Noel heads-up for the title. HPT Season XIV Player of the Year Aaron Johnson was a part of the final table, ultimately falling in sixth-place for $37,043, along with locking up the POY honors, which includes a $10,000 prize package of Main Event buy-ins and hotel accommodations for Season XV.
This year's POY race has been dominated by Nick Pupillo, and after starting the year off with a win at HPT Golden Gates in February for $194,478, Pupillo has added two more HPT Final Table appearances and five more cashes to give him a lead of 106.9 points over his closest opponent, October's HPT Daytona Beach champ Eric Salazar. This event does award a higher amount of POY points than other HPT events, however, and Salazar, HPT Ameristar East Chicago champ Nick Davidson, and Mike O'Neill could all potentially overtake Pupillo and steal the Season XV POY title from him at the last second.
HPT POY Standings
| Position | Name | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nick Pupillo | 324.7 |
| 2 | Eric Salazar | 217.8 |
| 3 | Nick Davidson | 190.8 |
| 4 | Mike O'Neill | 189.0 |
| 5 | Mike Shin | 161.4 |
| 6 | Chris Moon | 156.3 |
| 7 | Greg Wood | 152.5 |
| 8 | Mike Sabbia | 146.4 |
| 9 | Josh Reichard | 140.0 |
| 10 | Bill Byrnes | 140.0 |
PokerNews will be on site all weekend to cover all the action, so stay tuned as the Season Finale of the Heartland Poker Tour's fifteenth season kicks off here in beautiful St. Louis!