The four day WPT Legends of Poker event has just wrapped up Day 2. Taking place at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, this year’s tournament offered a $3,500 buy-in on day 1A, last Thursday, with an optional re-buy on day 1B, last Friday. This was the first WPT tournament to ever have this format.
Past winners include WPT Player of the Year Andy Frankenberger in 2010 and Prahlad Friedman in 2009. This is Season X of the World Poker Tour, and the Legends of Poker, at the Bike, is one of the few events to be on the schedule since season one.
Big names showed up on day one, including Phil Helmuth, Amit Makhija, Dwyte Pilgrim, Barry Greenstein, Jeff Madsen, Jamie Gold and most importantly, the Royal Flush Girls. On display in the tournament lobby is the massive Stanley Cup like Champions Cup, which is engraved with the names of all past WPT winners. This Champions Cup will be following the WPT at every stop this year. Every WPT winner will receive a smaller version of this Champions Cup as their winning trophy. This year’s WPT has a big change. Final tables, as well as random tables, throughout the tournament will live stream hole cards!
Day 1A featured 322 entrants, with the ending day chip leader being Matt Berkey, who finished with 248,500. J.C. Tran finished day 1B with the chip lead of 265,000 and 200 players remaining. The 140 players who finished Day 1A and 200 players who survived day 1B met yesterday, with 100 players remaining. Here are the current top five chip leaders:
1. Ken “Teach” Aldridge – 659,500
2. Cody Slaubaugh – 658,000
3. Will Failla – 550,500
4. Matt Berkey – 502,000
5. Tom Braband – 482,000
Alan Kessler is the biggest name with a big stack, in twelfth place, holding 408k in chips. The “Chainsaw” is looking to do something big in this tournament after cashing several times at this summer’s WSOP, including a second place finish in Event #42 PL Hold’em for $140K. Action resumes this afternoon at the Bike. The final table will be played tomorrow night, with the winner taking home $758,000!