The biggest event of the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Spring Poker Open started on Day 8 of the 10 day tournament series.

The $1,650 No Limit Hold’em Spring Poker Open Championship saw two of its three starting flights get cards in the air on Friday. The first flight got underway at 11 am and had 85 hopeful poker players pony up the buy-in for their shot at a piece of the $300,000 guaranteed prizepool.

The first flight was scheduled to play 14 levels or when it was down to 14% of the field. 20 minutes into Level 14, there was an elimination that trimmed the field down to 12 players and marked the end of the flight. Every subsequent flight will play 20 minutes into level 14 before bagging and tagging.

Martin Welch and Natasha Barbour topped the chip counts in the first flight, bagging 267,400 and 192,900, respectively.

Justin Zaki was the last elimination of the first flight and had just over a minute to re-enter the event and late register for the second flight, which started at 7 pm.

The second flight drew slightly fewer players than the first. 61 players registered for the second flight. Joining Zaki in the second flight were fellow top flight pros Shawn Cunix and John Dolan. All three players have seven figures in tournament earnings. Cunix has a WPT title to his name and Dolan has a WSOP Circuit ring and a WSOP Main Event final table appearance.

All three of them fired multiple bullets at the event, and none of them were able to survive a flight. They will have one final chance at this event when the third and final starting flight gets cards in the air at 11 am on Saturday.

Paul Stanechewski and Marc Lowe topped the chip counts of the second flight. Stanechewski bagged 260,900 and Lowe sealed up a bag full of 222,800 tournament chips.

Here are a look at the chip counts from the first two flights:

1. Martin Welch – 267,400
2. Paul Stanechewski – 260,900
3. Marc Lowe – 222,800
4. Carter Gent – 206,300
5. Natasha Barbour – 192,300
6. Greg Jennings – 177,000
7. Tommy Helms – 175,300
8. Yousef Nassr – 155,000
9. Rod Rodriguez – 153,200
10. Vitor Coelho – 152,000
11. Davis Adams – 124,900
12. Ronald “RJ” Sullivan – 124,500
13. Chris Dombrowski – 110,800
14. Brenda Lane-Worley – 100,500
15. Barry Wiedemann – 94,000
16. Amaury Lopez – 88,000
17. David Mandt – 84,600
18. Kevin Blewitt – 84,000
19. Jeff Coutroulis – 70,900
20. Larry Pileggi – 46,900
21. Emad Ayad – 28,000

Check back on Saturday morning to SHRTPoker.com for complete coverage of the third flight of the Spring Poker Open Championship event.