It was a pretty bold goal, but they almost achieved it. The World Poker Tour's WPT World Championship held its Day 1D promotion on Friday and despite the best efforts of the WPT, Wynn Las Vegas and players, they fell short of their $40 million guarantee. Some other organizations, the WPT and Wynn, saw this as an investment and have committed to honoring the $40 million prize pool by preparing a huge Christmas present for someone in first place.
Close, but no cigar
Day 1D faced a steep climb to meet the guarantee set by the WPT. After Day 1C there were only 2312 entries left on the board. Since the 4,000-player limit had to be exceeded, that meant that on Day 1D it would have taken a huge crowd of players – or players who chose to use a different orb in play – to even come close . The players did their part but in the end it was close but no cigar.
When the late registration bell rang, the tournament clock showed only 1,523 entries for the final flight of the WPT World Championship. That brought the total number of entries to 3,835, short of the necessary 4,000 entries that pushed her $10,000 buy-in up. This meant that, despite its best efforts, the WPT was unable to honor its $40 million guarantee.
Now, other sites (which we want to be kind and not embarrass) have also come to situations like this and have used the “casino discretion” rule for the fine print on their structure sheets to NOT give players what they thought they would would play. In a refreshing and positive move, the WPT and Wynn Las Vegas decided to honor the $40 million guarantee and take $2.147 million out of their pockets to ensure players received what they expected.
Adam Pliska, the president of the World Poker Tour, was surprisingly optimistic after the final bell rang. On X, the former Twitter, Pliska stated: “Grateful for the historic growth spurt in WPT Prime and WPTWC (WPT World Championship). Thank you, players, for your support. We feel it and it is important. Inspired to continue to push the company to do more to make the best running festival ever. Constant improvement, (no) regrets. Just the beginning.”
Some poker was played…
Of the 1,523 participants who flooded Wynn Las Vegas on Friday, 571 players survived the carnage and returned for day two on Saturday. At the top was Mateus Carrion, who bagged 982,000 chips for the fight. There was a tie for the second largest stack in the room between David Uvaydo and Teo Leibowitz, who both had 806,000 chips. In fifth place in the Day 1D game is a dangerous man, Anatoly Filatov, who is stacked enough for war on Day 2 with 773,000 ammo.
With the action underway for Day 2, 1,375 players are back in their seats at the Wynn, with a leaderboard that looks like this:
1. Kyle Ho, 1,211 million (Day 1C)
2. Chance Kornuth, 1.13 million (Day 1C)
3. Hossein Ensan, 1.1 million (Day 1C)
4. Jeff Hakim, 998,000 (Day 1A)
5. Mateus Carrion, 982,000 (Day 1D)
6. Adekunle Olonoh, 972,000 (Day 1A)
7. Alan Keating, 957,000 (Day 1A)
8. Peter Neff, 899,000 (Day 1B)
9. Matt Hunt, 863,000 (Day 1C)
10. Rudy Cervantes, 849,000 (Day 1C)
The 1,375 players have a long way to go on the 2nd day before they can even think about bursting the money bubble. 480 players will take home a piece of the $40 million pie offered by the WPT World Championship, with the min cash set at $18,700. Of course, big money is at the top of the leaderboard, with all six players at the WPT final table earning seven figures. Most of the cake goes to the champion, who will take home $5,678,000 in prize money and have their name engraved on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions' Cup for all eternity.
