Day 1B of the MSPT Season Final $1,100 Main Event at Canterbury Park attracted 277 entries which along with 1A’s brought the total field up to 493 entries. That surpasses our Spring event (475 entries) as the largest major poker tournament ($1K+ buy-in) in Minnesota history.

After 14 levels of play, Minneapolis’ Thomas Wu bagged the chip lead among the 52 Day 1B survivors with a hefty stack of 326,000, which is well ahead of the 1A chip leader Chris Meyers (278,000).

Speaking of Meyers, who currently sits atop the Kimo Sabe Mezcal MSPT Season 8 Player of the Year leader board with 3,350 points, that race came into focus on Day 1B. Contenders Mike Shanahan, Ahmed Taleb, and Max Havlish all saw their POY hopes go up in flames by falling on 1B.

Two players still in contention for POY, though they’ll likely need a win and for Meyers to exit early, are “Big” Al Hedin and Osama “Sammy” Aweida, who made it through 1B with 130,000 and 32,500 respectively. Those two will return on Day 2 to compete not only against Meyers, but Keith Heine as well. Heine sits in second place (2,967 points) and advanced on 1A with 195,500.

Others to make it through Day 1B were Koua Her (304,000), Drew Schulz (243,500), Rob Wazwaz (242,500), 2016 MSPT Iowa State Poker Champ Carter Myers (197,500), eight-time WSOP Circuit ring winner Josh Reichard (158,000), two-time MSPT champ Peixin Liu (149,500), 2017 Minnesota State Poker Champ Jon Hanner (111,000), and former Players of the Year Rich Alsup (72,500) and Mark Hodge (42,500).

Among those to fall on Day 1B were 2016 MSPT Michigan State Poker Champion Brett Blackwood, World Series of Poker bracelet winner John Reading, MSPT first-timer and poker Twitter legend Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers, 2016 MN Magazine Player of the Year Saad Ghanem, and Joe Matheson, who saw his streak of cashing every MSPT season come to an end.

Matheson’s failure to cash in Season 8 means Kou Vang, Matt Kirby, Dan “DQ” Hendrickson and Jeremy Dresch are the only four players in the world to have cashes each and every season of the MSPT.

Day 2 will get underway with 92 returning players at 11 a.m. local time and play down to a winner. The final table, which should be reached around 7 p.m., will be live streamed worldwide with hole cards.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we bring you all the action and eliminations straight from the floor of the latest MSPT Canterbury Park!