The World Poker Tour returned to the Thunder Valley Casino Resort for the $3,500 Rolling Thunder Main Event on Saturday and drew a field of 367 entrants. That number isn’t set as registration remains open two levels into play on Sunday’s Day 2, but there are 171 advancing players. Following eight levels of action, Moshe Gavrieli leads the field with 335,000.
Surviving Day 1
“I was running good all day,” Gavrieli said after bagging up. “I had some big hands and I made some hands on the river. No disasters today - which is good.”
“I’m going to do (tomorrow) what I did today,” he added. “Just play solid and tight.”
Just behind Gavrieli is Mark Egbert (285,500) and Wesley Haymond (279,000). Not too far off is WPT Champions Club member Harrison Gimbel with 250,000. “My day was not bad – I’m in for two bullets,” Gimbel said. “I chipped up very well on my second buy-in and I think I doubled up on the first hand.”
Jeff Platt, Xian Liu, Eric Baldwin, Maria Ho, Ryan Riess, Tyler Patterson, Tony Burns, Cherish Andrews and Jesse Sylvia all put chips in a bag to return on Sunday.
Burns making it on two big blinds
Burns is a well-known tournament director, currently for the Moneymaker Poker Tour, and bagged up six-figures – but he almost didn’t play. He was in town and played a satellite for the Main Event on Friday but busted. He was getting ready to leave town when a player told him there was another satellite in the morning. He stayed and won his seat with just two blinds in his stack.
Bin Weng, Allen Kessler, Ari Engel, Pat Lyons, Scott Stewart are a few players that took a seat today but did not advance on to Day 2.
While it was a normal day of poker for some, most players had their heads on a swivel sweating the action of the March Madness games spread across a dozen TV screens. It was most painful for Riess as he watched his Michigan State Spartans lose to North Carolina 85-69 after holding the lead in the first half.
Odds and Ends
Day 1 was scheduled for just eight levels today as the WPT Champions Club dinner is tonight. Harrison Gimbel, Dan Sepiol, Tyler Patterson, Taylor Paur, Scott Eskenazi, Brian Altman and Bin Weng are a few of the former champions that will be dining alongside Matt Savage and the other WPT VIPs.
Eskenazi won the 2023 WPT Rolling Thunder event for $361,660 in the largest WPT field Thunder Valley has seen with 590. Jeremy Joseph finished runner-up and Tony Dunst final-tabled in sixth place.
Day 2 gets cards in the air promptly at 11:00 am with ten levels of action scheduled for play. Action remains eight-handed throughout the tournament and is scheduled for four days. Day 3 is scheduled for the field to play down to a final table of six players and Day 4 plays down to a winner on Tuesday.
WPT Rolling Thunder Main Event top 10 chip stacks
- Moshe Gavrieli – 335,000
- Mark Egbert – 285,500
- Wesley Haymond – 279,000
- Alfie Poetra – 266,000
- Ryoya Inokuchi – 258,000
- Adam Duong – 252,000
- Harrison Gimbel – 250,000
- Matthew Boddorf – 248,000
- Aman Gupta – 248,000
- Lewis Robledo – 229,500
All photos courtesy of WPT - Drew Amato
