Who Will Walk Away with the $123,180 First-Place Prize?
Welcome back to the Mid-States Poker Tour Golden Gates Casino!
Over the last three days, 510 entrants – a new record for the stop — packed the Golden Gates Poker Parlour to create a $494,700 prize pool, which absolutely obliterated the $200,000 guarantee.
Of those, just 87 combined players survived from the three starting flights, and today Bobby Sanoubane of Aurora, Colorado will begin the day as chip leader with 466,000, which is ahead of both Day 1b chip leader Derek McMaster (450,000) and Day 1a's Ross Reichert (357,500).
Earlier in week, Golden Gates Casino hosted a $360 buy-in $100,000 guaranteed MSPT Regional event, which attracted 770 entrants. Sanoubane, who fired four bullets in the Main Event, took down that tournament for $33,000 after a six-way chop. If there's such a thing as home field advantage in poker, Sanoubane has it.
Of course he'll have his work cut out as he faces some stiff competition on Day 2 including defending champ Kane Lai (304,000), MSPT Team Pros Matt Alexander (270,500) and Nick Pupillo (100,000), Colorado poker pro Bryan Devonshire (178,000), WSOP Millionaire Maker champ Adrian Buckley (157,500), two-time WSOP bracelet winner David Warga (60,000), and the short stack coming into play, Jeff Fielder (32,000).
It'll also be interesting to keep an eye on the MSPT Season 6 Player of the Year race today. Mark Hodge, who was eliminated on Day 1c, currently leads with 3,540 points, a solid 540 ahead of second place Blake Bohn. However, the aforementioned Pupillo sits in third with 2,950 points. With neither Hodge nor Bohn in the mix today, Pupillo finds himself with a great opportunity to add some coveted POY points.
To have a look at the current MSPT POY leaderboard, CLICK HERE.
Day 2 will kick off at 12:00 p.m. local time, which is about an hour from now. Who will walk away with the top prize? Be sure to join us then as we bring you all the action from the MSPT Golden Gates Casino!
Here's a look at those who've capture titles in Season 6 thus far:
| Dates | Event | Entrants | Winner | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan. 15-25, 2015 | MSPT bestbet Jacksonville | 421 | Brian Arbaugh | $102,806 |
| Jan. 30 – Feb. 8, 2015 | MSPT Running Aces | 354 | Erv Bjerga | $91,941 |
| Feb. 14-22, 2015 | MSPT Ho-Chunk Gaming Wisconsin Dells | 463 | Ben Wiora | $114,512 |
| March 5-15 | MSPT Golden Gates | 409 | Kane Lai | $101,365 |
| March 21-29 | MSPT Meskwaki | 371 | Chad Willett | $96,760 |
| April 4-12 | MSPT Potawatomi | 635 | Jason Mirza | $147,529 |
| April 6-19 | MSPT Maryland Live! Casino | 270 | Greg Himmelbrand | $72,910 |
| April 17-26 | MSPT Canterbury Park | 430 | Dan Hendrickson | $106,182 |
| May 9-17 | MSPT FireKeepers Casino | 614 | Mark Rubenstein | $142,637 |
| June 1-5 | MSPT Venetian | 1,964 | Angelina Rich | $215,815 |
| July 24-26 | MSPT Meskwaki | 410 | Blake Bohn | $101,229 |
| August 14-16 | MSPT Grand Falls | 238 | Alan Curl | $64,941 |
| August 21-23 | MSPT Tropicana Evansville | 251 | Michael O'Neill | $67,746 |
| September 4-6 | MSPT Potawatomi | 462 | Dan Goepel | $114,117 |
| September 18-20 | MSPT Running Aces | 328 | Peixin Liu | $85,498 |
| October 10-18 | MSPT FireKeepers Casino | 559 | Michael Ferraroti | $134,642 |
| November 6-8 | MSPT Meskwaki | 410 | Rich Alsup | $101,229 |
For additional news and updates, be sure to follow the tour on Twitter @msptpoker.