If time is money, 12 hours on Saturday represented $2,000,000 in the one-day Paradise Pot-limit Omaha event. 200 players put up $10K each to create the multimillion dollar prize pool, and with blind levels rising every 20 minutes it was a runaway train of a contest. Forget the slower structures of the weekās earlier high rollers; in this turbo-charged tourney you had to be prepared to gamble to get ahead, and the players knew it.
Many of those players had already locked up their Day 2 seat for the $26K Super Main Event, and so the opportunity to play a single-day tournament that wouldnāt eat into their preparations for Monday was too good to pass up. Among those was Daniel Negreanu, who survived the Super Mainās Day 1b with 3x starting stacks and was looking to play a little over the weekend. His run ended just shy of the final table in 8th, picking up $45,710 for his āSaturday jobā.
A final table with the likes of elite players Mike Watson, Rui Ferreira and Biao Ding could have been an edgy, to-and-fro affair, but in a fast structure like this, time is of the essence. To illustrate this point, the final table played down from four players to a winner in just four hands. Heads-up between Mike Gorodinsky and Dan Zack lasted just the one hand, but it was a good one, as Gorodinsky rivered a straight to beat Zackās set.
Gorodinsky claimed the top prize of $393,250, along with a fourth WSOP winnerās bracelet.
64 more go through in Super Main Event
From straights over sets to winning in straight sets; Saturdayās Day 1c of the $26K Super Main featured a global tennis icon in former world number one Boris Becker. The Tennis Hall of Famer ended up just two spots off the end-of-day bubble, busting in 66th place as 64 players progressed to Day 2.
He did play a part in one huge hand on the WSOP Paradise livestream, however, which would surely have seen many players hit the rail, but ended up costing him a minimal amount. Holding 
, Becker elected to smooth call from the big blind after an UTG raise from Miguel Capriles, who held 
. Also along for the ride were Denys Chufarin with 
, and Daniel Ghionoiu with 
.
The all-action flop? 
Two overpairs, an open-ended straight draw and a nut flush draw gave all four players plenty of reasons to stick around, but Becker saw enough warning signs to ditch his pocket queens when Capriles c-bet for a little over half the pot. It was a decision which paid off, as the 
on the turn would have given him a set, and a losing hand, as Chufarin made his straight. Capriles, Ghionoiu and Chufarin got it all-in on the turn, only for the river 
to bring home the flush for Ghionoiu.
Joining Becker on the rail, and with only Day 1d remaining to make it through, were last yearās winner Stanislav Zegal, Jason Mercier, Faraz Jaka and many more.
Heading through to Tuesdayās Day 2 with a big stack is WSOP Super High Roller winner Santhosh Suvarna, who carries the most chips forward from Day 1c with 3.16M chips, slightly ahead of the UKās Matthew Belcher with 3.13M and Finlandās Eelis Paerssinen with 3.12M. Also locking up a slot for Day 2 were recent PLO champ Stephen Chidwick, Chance Kornuth, Nacho Barbero, Erik Seidel and Chris Moneymaker.
Overlay watch
Thereās a record-busting $50M guaranteed prize pool for the $26K Super Main Event, which puts the magic number of entrants needed to cover at 2,000. With one flight left to run, hereās how the numbers break down for total entries in the starting flights so far:
- Day 1a: 461
- Day 1b: 254
- Day 1c: 181
- Running total: 896
Online Day 1s have qualified 90 players - 30 from each of three Day 1s - who will be joining the field on Day 3, once the money bubble has burst.
It should be noted that numbers from various online qualifiers are not currently available, and may make up a good amount of the prize pool. Whatever the numbers look like behind the curtain, though, tournament organizers will be hoping for a bumper Day 1d today when action resumes at noon.
Need more? PokerOrg Instant Live is your friend
The Instant Live page for WSOP Paradise has the latest updates, chipcounts and weird and wonderful views from the tournament floor throughout the entire festival, so be sure to stop by and make friends with it.
Stuff likeā¦ how big a power move is it to interrupt the players in the Super Main so they can watch you collect a WSOP bracelet, then make them stand for your national anthem?
Then thereās the important strategy content, like what kind of face to make when you fold trip jacks (courtesy of Sean Winter).
Love poker? Got 12 hours to kill? You can watch yesterdayās Day 1c action from the Super Main Event below.
Images courtesy of WSOP
