The first day of the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) Grand Falls $1,110 Main Event drew 212 entries to kick things off and already surpassed the tournament's $200,000 guaranteed prize pool with one flight still to go.
Plenty of big names made their way to Grand Falls Casino, creating a star-studded field with a room full of MSPT champs and Hall of Famers.
With chips flying and players dropping, play slowed down after the final break, and a full 15 levels were played until completion.
Once players put their chips into the bags, it was Ben Frye leading the pack with an impressive 860,000. Frye started the final two levels just above the chip average before catching some steam at the end of the night while others falling out of contention as he continued to add to his stack until play concluded for the night.
Kitkat Klassen was able to find the second spot on the leaderboard, also due to a late-night heater. After starting the final level with a below average chip stack, Klassen was able to get hot at the right time and spun-up a 705,000 stack in the final three hands of the evening.
MSPT Hall of Famer Rob WazWaz came into the day holding the top spot for Season 14 Player of the Year and also experienced a surge at the end of the night to bag a third-place stack of 688,000, positioning himself yet again in spot to make another deep run.
After being seen at the top of the counts for majority of the day, Reg Powell was able to put 483,000 on his slip to end the night while MSPT champ Max Havlish (394,000) rounded out the top five stacks.
Others that advanced included Graham Beynon (282,000), Two-time Grand Falls Regional champ Eric Atchison (266,000), Miles Barnum (235,000) Terence Reid (185,000), MSPT Hall of Famer Mark Hodge (97,000), and MSPT champ Jon Kim (53,000).
All who did not bag will have one more flight to try and do so, with that being held tomorrow Saturday, August 19th at 3 p.m. local time.
As usual, the live reporting team will be back at it then, so be sure to come back and see who else adds their name to Sunday's Day 2 roster.
MSPT Grand Falls Remaining Schedule
| Date |
Time (CDT) |
Tournament |
Chips |
Location |
| Saturday, August 19 |
10:00 AM |
$265 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event |
15,000 |
Event Center |
| Saturday, August 19 |
3:00 PM |
$1,100 Main Event Day 1B (2-Day Trophy Event) |
30,000 |
Event Center |
| Sunday, August 20 |
11:00 AM |
$1,100 Main Event Day 2 Restart (2-Day Trophy Event) |
- |
Event Center |
| Sunday, August 20 |
Noon |
$250 Last Chance Showdown NLHE |
15,000 |
Event Center |