WPO Day 15: One Flight Done in Championship

All preliminary events are in the books and today brought out some big names for the opening flight of the 2016 Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Winter Poker Open Championship.

All three Seminole Hard Rock Tampa team members were in action with John Racener and Justin Zaki moving on to Day 2. Ambassador Wally Maddah had some tough luck to exit after registration closed but will be back tomorrow trying once again.

We saw some of our prelim champions using their seat today including Manny Minaya, Bryce McVay, Kostas Papastavrou, Dmitry Agrachov, and Kirsten Olieberg all playing. Olieberg was the only one to make it through and she bagged up 205,000 for Sunday.

The tournament drew 142 entries to put more than $200,000 in the game on the way to hitting the $300,000 guaranteed prize pool. They should get there tomorrow afternoon and continue running it up until Championship registration closes on Saturday evening.

Matthew Leecy (pictured above) bagged the biggest stack at the end of the day with his 339,000 well clear of second place Moe Affaneh with 287,500. Also advancing were Ryan Van Sanford, John Holley, Peter Walsworth, and Jon Borenstein.

Tomorrow brings around the second of three flights and they will kick things off at 11am. Flight B will play 45-minutes levels with a dinner break after Level 6 and bag up after Level 14.

There will also be two last chance satellites running tomorrow in the Championship. Both have five seats guaranteed running at 3pm and 7pm.