Farcas Tops 98 Survivors After Bubble Madness; Kanit and Rheem Among Big Stacks
The flagship tournament of the 2023 World Series of Poker Paradise at the five-star Atlantis Resort & Casino has officially kicked off. In the first of four live starting days, a field of 657 entries emerged in the Grand Balltroom. Along with the 883 entries of the previous online flight on GGPoker, Event #10: $5,000 Main Event Championship is already more than halfway towards meeting the ambitious $15 million guarantee.
Since the online flight played down to the money bubble and produced 127 survivors, each of the four starting days on Paradise Island is also set to whittle down each field to the top 15 percent. The goal for Day 1a was 99 finishers, but a tumultuous money bubble reduced the field to just 98 players, who all bagged and tagged chips for the night.
Most certainly contributing to the spectacular end of the night was Marian Farcas, who ultimately topped the leaderboard with 1,374,000. He three-bet jammed twice against shorter stacks and was caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. Seven-deuce suited could not crack pocket aces but ace-trey suited got there against the ace-jack of Jeremie Zouari. Chin Wei Lim was the other casualty when his ace-king suited fell to the jack-ten suited of Armin Rezaei.
Taiwan's Wei-Hsun Lu was among the leaders for most of the late stages and advanced with 1,257,000 while two other players earned seven-figure stacks: Connor Rash (1,119,000) and Mustapha Kanit (1,039,000. Chino Rheem missed the same feat by a single chip and declared 999,000 after more than fifteen hours of play.
Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marian Farcas | Romania | 1,374,000 | 115 |
| 2 | Wei-Hsun Lu | Taiwan | 1,257,000 | 105 |
| 3 | Connor Rash | United States | 1,119,000 | 93 |
| 4 | Mustapha Kanit | Italy | 1,039,000 | 87 |
| 5 | Chino Rheem | United States | 999,000 | 83 |
| 6 | Ioannis Angelou-Konstas | Greece | 940,000 | 78 |
| 7 | Joseph Lebrun | United States | 884,000 | 74 |
| 8 | Ratharam Sivagnanam | Canada | 830,000 | 69 |
| 9 | Sean Troha | United States | 749,000 | 62 |
| 10 | Alan Khoo | Singapore | 727,000 | 61 |
Several WSOP Main Event champions were among the contestants on Day 1a but the only one to make it through was none other than the current World Champion Daniel Weinman. After a longer hiatus since his victory in Las Vegas, he recently returned to the action with a second-place finish in a WSOP Circuit Main Event and carried over the momentum to The Bahamas. He turned his starting stack of 50,000 into an above-average stack of 453,000.
Koray Aldemir, Jamie Gold and Ryan Riess were not as fortunate as they all joined a long list of notable casualties throughout more than seventeen and a half levels of 40 minutes each. The 2019 WSOP Europe Main Event winner, Alexandros Kolonias from Greece, ended the night with 329,000.
Notables to advance with big stacks include Ioannis Angelou-Konstas (940,000), Sean Troha (749,000), Faraz Jaka (682,000), Bryce Yockey (612,000), and Chris Hunichen (448,000).
The 98 Day 1a survivors and 126 online in-the-money qualifiers can still enter any of the remaining three live starting flights in order to run up a bigger tally, but only the largest stack will be carried over to Day 2 on Tuesday, December 12.
Some of poker's biggest names are still expected to join the fray, such as Daniel Negreanu and 17-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who has already promised a grand spectacle for his arrival. Much less fanfare can be expected from Hall of Famer Erik Seidel, who joined an exclusive club by winning his tenth WSOP bracelet in Event #7: $50,000 Super High Roller yesterday.
Many other top pros, poker enthusiasts, online qualifiers and ambitious recreational players are expected to take their shot in the remaining three starting days on December 10 and 11.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide exclusive updates until the conclusion of this exciting poker event in paradise.