2015 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam Main Event Day 1b: Wells Leads, Actor Acevedo Bags Big
The second of two Day 1 starting flights for the 2015 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam Main Event drew a whopping 309 entries to the Niagara Falls Poker Room at Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel on Saturday. Before we get to the recap of Day 1b, please know you can follow along with the live action from Day 2 by clicking here.
That brought the total entries up to 504, absolutely crushing the $150,000 guarantee. The $550+$50 buy-in created a big $267,498 prizepool that will pay 54 spots. A min-cash will be worth $1,150, and first place will pay a healthy $61,535.
By the time the first 15 levels of play were done, just 57 remained. They will join the 33 survivors from Day 1a in returning to play for the title and huge stacks of cash beginning at 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Using his classic over-betting and loose-calling style, Bruce Pace built a large stack of chips, pushing up over 500,000 at one time, claiming victim after victim on the way to a grand lead. Yet, somehow, he let it slip away at the end of the last level of the night, bagging 259,500, with Erie, PA's Jeff Wells making a couple of big hands against him to snatch that lead away.
Thanks to Pace, Wells will take the overall lead into Day 2 with 456,000.
Day 1b Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jeff Wells | 456,000 |
| 2 | William Liang | 369,000 |
| 3 | Kirk Acevedo | 303,000 |
| 4 | John Grace | 296,500 |
| 5 | Bruce Pace | 259,500 |
| 6 | Tom Urbanski | 252,500 |
| 7 | Leo Kaplin | 246,500 |
| 8 | Geoffrey O'Connor | 234,000 |
| 9 | Matt Shanahan | 231,500 |
| 10 | Frank Dellaria | 215,000 |
Hollywood actor and poker enthusiast Kirk Acevedo got some time off from filming a TV show in nearby Toronto, Canada, and turned up to play today, bagging an impressive 303,000-chip stack thanks to some solid grinding and a big three-way all-in pot late.
Just Acevedo, Torontonian William Liang, Wells, and Day 1a chip leader Jeffrey Hobrecker will come into Day 2 over the 300,000-chip mark.
Expect tons of action when the chase for the title and $61,535 first-place prize kicks of Sunday at 11 a.m. local time with 90 players remaining, and the PokerNews Live Reporting team will endeavor to bring it all to you, right here in this space.
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