Victor Nitel Claims Chip Lead as Day 1d of the Main Event Concludes
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The first matinee offering of the Moneymaker��s Road to the PSPC Tour began at noon today at Aspers Casino Westfield Stratford City. Seven players survived out of the 64 total entries and of those, it was Victor Nitel who had the most profitable day, bagging 490,000 at the end. Nitel is in excellent shape, going through second in chips overall so far. Only Edgar Drozdov (Day 1c) is ahead of him with 620,000; with Nitel managing to surpass PokerStars Pro Chris Moneymaker and William Miskelly who each finished on 470,000 from Day 1a and Day 1c respectively.
Rungarun Thongnonsung (322,000) took second place after a late burst of activity saw her eliminate former chip leader Juan Avila after hitting one of two outs with pocket-jacks against queen-seven on a queen-high flop. She is followed by poker-circuit regular Christopher Yong (291,000), in third. One of the most notable names in the tournament, Yong jumped in to play in the last two levels of late registration. A couple of re-entries later and Yong had managed to build a stack, with many of his pots won without showdown.
Piotr Kmieciak (254,000), Salvatore Donato (250,000), Johan Gonzalez (219,000) and Kevin Manohar (90,000), complete the seven players, who make a total of 37 when added to the survivors from previous flights. Notably, Donato remains in with a shot of winning a second Platinum Pass to the PSPC 2020. Last year he won one after taking down a PokerStars Megastack event, which took him to the Bahamas in January.
It wasn��t good news for everyone, with some well-known faces also hitting the rail. Getnet Kassa was eliminated just shy of the final table after moving all in from late position, only to run into Christopher Yong��s pocket-aces. Irina Nikolaidi and Mark Barlow also tried but failed to progress. Still, all is not necessarily lost as there are three more London flights to choose from if they want to get back in contention.
Currently the 6pm flight (Day 1e) is underway, as is the Day 1f flight in Aspers Casino Milton Keynes. The surviving chip counts for those flights will be available ahead of Day 1g tomorrow. PokerNews will be back then, at noon.