Pickup Trucks Competition on Day 1a of HPT The Meadows
Heartland Poker Tour The Meadows $1,100 Main Event got rolling Thursday with the first of three starting flights, and Jason Pickup (lead photo) made like his namesake and trucked the competition, bagging nearly 13 starting stacks.
Pickup is one of just eight players who bagged, as a small turnout of just 53 entries filled a few tables in the lower level of the Pittsburgh-area casino. The players were a couple of bustouts away from the hard stop at six when the night ended and the final six hands were dealt at every table.
Short early on, Pickup doubled up when top pair held against a pair and the nut flush draw, and he started rocketing up by flopping a couple of sets later in the day. Finally, to close things out, he picked up aces in an opportune spot as a former second-place finisher in this event, John Yocca, jammed about twenty big blinds with ace-queen under the gun.
That enabled Pickup to finish with 387,500.
Chuck Scaglione (252,000), Doug Krency (234,500), James Trott (191,500), Griffin Abel (180,000), Michael Iannace (161,500), Carl Householder (125,500) and Kyle Stapleton (68,000) were the others advancing.
Scaglione picked off a triple-barrel bluff from MSPT champ Chris Meyers near the end of the night to take most of his chips and lead to an elimination of one of the more accomplished players in the field.
Others going bust included Greg Wood, Andrew Campbell, and two-time WSOP bracelet winner Adam Friedman.
All will have more chances to bag starting on Day 1b, which gets underway Friday at noon local time. PokerNews will be on hand for another fifteen levels of live reporting, so come back then for more coverage of the HPT.
