The World Poker Tour Online Main Event kicked-off on Sunday, May 23, 2021. The Day 1 A cohort played down to 78 players, with Canadian poker-pro Connor Drinan leading the pack by a slim margin. Drinan will start Day 2 with 3,847,386 in chips. He is closely dogged by Tom Kunze with 3,830,846 in chips.
Drinan is a regular on the high-roller circuit, though he has very few titles to his name. He only has an online WSOP bracelet from last year, the 2011 Florida State Poker Championship, and two EPT Barcelona side events from 2014 and 2016.
Despite this short list, Drinan has accumulated well over $11 million in tournament cashes. Most of these are from his numerous high-stakes final table appearances.
He will be looking to add a WPT title to the list.
Day 1B will be held next Sunday. The Sunday after that will be the Day 1 Turbo flight, in which smaller stacks and faster blinds will make the action hectic. The survivors from all three days will then meet back on May 31 for Day 2. Then they'll meet again June 1 for Day 3 when the TV final table of six players will be reached.
The final table will take place June 2, when the second ever WPT Online ME champ will be crowned.
State of play
There were 477 individual players in the Day 1A flight. With rebuys, this group ended up putting 521 buy-ins into the prize pool.
At $3,000 + $200 per shot, that makes for $1,563,000 in the pot and counting. With the guarantee at $3 million and two more Day 1s to go, things are looking good for the event. The event is hosted on partypoker. Given it is competing with GGPoker's WSOPC events, Party's tournament director must have been watching the attendance numbers with some nervousness.
Among the other players who made it to Day 2 with Drinan were a few notables.
Fellow high-rollers Andras Nemeth and Michiel Brummelhuis are in the top five for chips. They have $3.4 million and $2.1 million is live tournament cashes respectively.
Other notables include Paul Hong, a solid New Zealand pro, and Yuan Li, who won the Aussie Million's TOC in 2020.
Canadians seem to be crushing this event so far. Along with Drinan and Li, Erik Lemarquand and Timothy Cavallin, both solid players in their own right, hail from America's shores.
Day 1A final chip stacks
| Position | Player Name | Chip Stack |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Connor Drinan | 3,847,386 |
| 2nd | Tom Kunze | 3,830,846 |
| 3rd | Paul Hong | 3,266,071 |
| 4th | Andras Nemeth | 3,025,203 |
| 5th | Michiel Brummelhuis | 2,966,027 |
| 6th | Andre Abreu | 2,953,564 |
| 7th | Erik Lemarquand | 2,941,559 |
| 8th | Yuan Yuan Li | 2,887,600 |
| 9th | Thomas Boivin | 2,695,794 |
| 10th | Timothy Cavallin | 2,662,685 |
Featured image source: Flickr by WPT
