Francis Anderson Takes Overall Lead in Day 1b of WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship
The second flight of the $3,500 WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship saw a total of 683 registration slips sold and when the dust had settled only 396 found a bag. Sitting atop the counts after eight levels of play is Francis Anderson with a stack of 300,100 which is good for the overall lead headed into Day 2.
Anderson flew under the radar for the better part of the day but found a heater during the last level of the night where he rocketed to the top of the chip counts. The Wappingers Falls, NY, native has over $600,000 in live career earnings with his second-best cash coming at the $ 3,500 WPT Seminole Rock & Roll Poker Open Championship in Hollywood this past November when he placed sixth for $111,895. Anderson had two six-figure scores in 2019 and is in a great spot to find his first of this year.
Fan-favorite Craig Varnell found the second largest stack of the flight after bagging 240,600, putting him third on the overall counts headed into Day 2. Three players that round out the top five stacks from this event are Kenneth O'Donnell (224,400), [Removed:150] (223,100), and Taylor von Kriegenbergh (219,400).
A star-studded field showed up for the last flight of the event including the likes of Joey Couden (197,700), Ian O'Hara (193,700), Amnon Filippi (185,500), Jonas Wexler (184,500), Michael Haberman (119,500), Sam Taylor (107,100), Ari Engel (90,800), Soheb Porbandarwala (82,800), Cliff Josephy (81,100), Vanessa Selbst (75,900), and Peter Walsworth (71,000).
Day 2 will begin at noon when players return to level nine and the late registration period will remain open until the start of level 11. The blinds will remain 60-minutes until the late registration period ends in which they will bump up to 75-minutes in length. The second day of this event will play until the end of level 16 and all players will then bag up and move onto Day 2 where the blinds will again increase, this time to 90-minutes.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be here to provide you with all of the updates, so stay tuned as all of the action unfolds.