Day 1D of the $1,100 buy-in, $3.5 million guarantee MSPT Venetian Main Event attracted 1,872 runners, which along with 1A’s 477, 1B’s 750, and 1C’s 1,312 brought the total field up to 4,411 total entries. That made it the largest poker tournament in both MSPT and Venetian history!
The top 450 players will get paid a minimum of $2,150 while the eventual winner will take home $548,341. Day 2 will see 648 players return to action (63 from 1A, 105 1B, 175 1C, and 306 1D – minus some best stacks forward), meaning 197 need to fall before the money is made.
After 15 levels of play on Day 1D, the field was whittled down to 306 players with Henry Van Tran (pictured) and his stack of 459,500 leading the way. That is behind both 1C chip leader Jason Sater (770,500) and 1B leader Gavin O’Rourke (530,000), but slightly ahead of 1A chip leader David McConachie (426,000).
Others to bag big stacks on 1D were Houston Baker (445,500), Brian Johnson (364,000), Bo Andreas Gustafsson (359,500) and David “The Maven” Gutfreund (349,000), who round out the top five.
They were joined by Cord Garcia (205,500), 2017 MSPT Indiana State Poker Champion Satish Thakur (144,000), Dan O’Brien (134,000), MSPT season 4 Ho-Chunk winner Josh Reichard (123,000), Nancy Birnbaum (104,000), Brian Berthiaume (103,500), WSOP bracelet winner Nick Jivkov (101,000), Will “The Thrill” Failla (93,500), and Minnesota’s Vic Peppe (82,500).
Of course, not everyone was fortunate enough to find a bag. Among those to hit the rail on 1D were MSPT Season 6 Player of the Year Mark Hodge, two-time MSPT champs Peixin Liu and Jeremy Dresch, former PokerNews hostess Kristy Arnett, and former MSPT champs Dan “DQ” Hendrickson, Jason Sell and Jason Seitz, just to name a few.
Day 2 will get underway at Noon local time on Thursday. Be sure to join us then as we bring you all the action and eliminations straight from the tournament floor.