Wolfe Hunts Down Lead, Raymer Falls Late on Day 1c
Day 1c proved to be the largest flight yet at the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) Ameristar East Chicago $1,650 Main Event, as 174 entries were logged and 31 of those players advanced to secure seats in Day 2.
When the chips found their way to the bottom of bags and the players hustled out of the doors to get some much-needed sleep after the lengthy grind, Billy Wolfe had his name on the bag containing the most chips. Wolfe finished with 371,000, a relatively modest total in comparison to the titanic stacks bagged by the Day 1a and Day 1b leaders Craig Casino (464,000) and Nadya Magnus (497,000), respectively.
Wolfe caught fire a little after the dinner break. He won a huge pot off Brek Schutten when he value-bet the nut flush big on the river and got paid off to surge past 350,000. Later, he'd win a sizable flip with tens against ace-king, spiking a ten on the river after being out flopped.
All night, neighbor Yoon Kim anointed him a luckbox, and Wolfe was undoubtedly happy to make the big hands no matter what needles Kim wanted to fire at him.
Kim himself managed to accumulate 233,000 himself and was joined by Mike O'Neill (315,000), Larry Ormson (230,000), Rob Wazwaz (206,000) and Kou Vang (110,000) in seeing the last hand. O'Neill and Wazwaz are both former HPT champs, with Wazwaz winning this very event in 2017.
A handful of accomplished players also bagged south of 100,000. Ravi Raghavan, Mike Shin and Alex Ziskin all have $900K-plus in tournament winnings but have plenty of work ahead of them if they want to add a six-figure score here.
A chip in a bag is still a chip in a bag, though, something several others who fired are envying at this point.
Most notably, Greg Raymer appeared set to find a bag after working his way to around 150,000, but a late slide sent the former Main Event packing. He lost a sizable race when his tens failed to hold against ace-jack and said the rest of his chips were gone in another flip shortly thereafter.
Raymer and the other players without Day 2 tickets will have one last chance to get a crack at the prize pool, which has worked its way north of $600,000. Day 1d kicks off at noon local time on Sunday. So, those fading Mother's Day festivities or getting flowers and brunches out of the way early can return to Ameristar East Chicago then to fire away, with PokerNews providing more live updates.