Day 1a of the Mid-States Poker Tour Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, the penultimate stop of our seventh season, drew an unexpected 269 entrants, which easily surpassed the advertised $200,000 guarantee. With Saturday’s Day 1b expected to be even bigger, there’s no telling just how big the prize pool will grow.
After 14 levels of play Friday night, 49 players remained with Songjie Zhou and his stack of 283,000 leading the way. Meanwhile, Erika Obst (pictured above), the only woman to advance, was second in chips with 247,000.
Songjie Zhou
Not far behind with 211,000 was MSPT Season 6 Meskwaki champ Rich Alsup. If you recall, Alsup finished runner-up last weekend to his good friend Carl Carodenuto in the MSPT Golden Gates Main Event. The win gave Carodenuto the lead in the MSPT Season 7 Player of the Year race while Alsup was just 200 points behind him.
Making things even more interesting is that Carodenuto missed his flight to Milwaukee today, meaning Alsup had put himself in a good position to pass his friend. However, Carodenuto is expected to arrive in time for Day 1b, so there’s really no telling what could happen.
Others who punched their ticket to Sunday’s Day 2 were Kou Vang (236,000), Mike Holm (188,000), Gerald Heckathorn (186,500), Aaron Johnson (133,500), Ravi Raghavan (110,500), and Mike Shin (56,500), who you may recall as finishing in 12th place in this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event.
Of course not everyone could make it through. Among those to fall on Day 1a were MSPT Season 6 Player of the Year Mark Hodge, MSPT Pro Blake Bohn, former MSPT Potawatomi champs Travis Lauson and Dan Goepel, Potawatomi Regional champ Vinh Tran, 2016 MSPT Wisconsin State Poker champ Andy Rubinberg, and MSPT champs Aaron Massey, Josh Reichard, and Ken Baime, just to name a few.
The good news is they’ll all have the opportunity to try again on Day 1b if they so choose. The second and final starting flight will begin at 4 p.m. local time on Saturday. Once again we’ll bring you all the action right here in the MSPT Live Updates, so be sure to join us then. In the meantime, good night from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.