Veliu Bags Narrow Lead over Shvarts on Day 1b
A little after midnight, Day 1b of Parx Big Stax 1100 wrapped up, and the leaderboard looks quite a bit different compared to Day 1a. Whereas Greg Fishberg dominated the final standings with a stack that far outpaced the count of anyone else, the Day 1b counts are more tightly contested.
At the top sits Alida Veliu, although there's no meaningful separation between the 462,000 she finished with and the 461,000 bagged by Grigoriy Shvarts. They have the top two counts of the 48 who made it through, with Jonathan Diolosa (447,000) and Matt Costanzo (423,500) the only others north of 400K.
Veliu actually surpassed 500,000 on at least two occasions, but she hit a slight downswing before the end of the night, highlighted by doubling up Michael Stashin with pocket eights against pocket aces. Still, she'll have over 90 big blinds to start Day 2.
Shvarts had his run toward the lead halted when he stepped away from the tournament for a bit. He cracked an opponent's aces with king-queen, hitting quad kings and getting his river shove paid, but he didn't stick around to enjoy his newfound chips. Saying he wasn't feeling well, Shvarts took his leave from the tournament but returned just before it was time to bag.
Other notables advancing included both Mukul and Vinny Pahuja, DJ MacKinnon, Roman Valerstein and all-time Parx money leader Joe Palma.
Anyone who didn't advance still has a chance to get back in with the early part of Day 2 being open to registration, although players will only start with 10 big blinds. The total field has grown to 357 with the Day 1b entries totaling 217 of that, and 79 players have now punched tickets to Day 2.
Action resumes for Day 2 at 11 a.m. local time here at Parx, so come back to PokerNews then for more coverage.