Mathieu Philbert Bags Chip Lead on Day 1c of the the $365 GIANT
On a packed day in the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino a total of 1,148 entries showed up for Day 1c of Event #6: $365 GIANT No-Limit Hold'em. Just 55 of them found a bag by the end of 21 levels. Chipleader at the end of the night was Mathieu Philbert of France who bagged an impressive 1,940,000.
Philbert won a pot for over 1.5 million during the final six hands of play. The hand was against Matt Telepo who tried to pull a fast one on Philbert with an ill-timed bluff. Philbert saw through it and soared towards the top of the standings with the massive pot.
This flight had a total of five players that broke the million mark, including Kevin Ninkovich (1,505,00), bracelet winner Arkadiy Tsinis (1,495,000), Terry Kelley (1,035,000), and well-known English pro Artan Dedusha (1,025,000).
Some other notable stacks moving on from this flight include Jett Blackwell (975,000), Alexander Allegranza (875,000), Jeremy Brown (820,000), bracelet winner Peter Eichhardt (780,000) and Gary Lucci (715,000).
There were several bracelet holders that were in this flight but did not manage to find a bag including Phil Laak, Benjamin Yu, Kathy Liebert and Canada's Calen McNeil. Some other well-known players that did not manage to make it through include Sandeep Vasudevan, Bradley Butcher and Allen Kessler.
The money bubble was popped by Jordan Polk who also made it through to Day 2 with 725,000. The remaining 173 players were then guaranteed a min-cash of $556 dollars. After the bubble burst, the tournament turned into a haotic shove fest of people trying to either build up a stack or bust and return next Friday to try and spin up a stack on that flight.
The tournament has now completed it's third of five flights and players will have two more shots to run up a stack for Day 2 on June 30th. The last two remaining flights will be on June 22nd and June 29th, with everyone returning on June 30th for Day 2.
The PokerNews team will be bringing full coverage of this and every other WSOP event this summer.