Troy Quenneville leads the remaining 75 players at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Caribbean Main Event after Day 2; with 302,000 chips, he is the only player to finish Monday’s action above the 300,000 mark. Alexander Denisov is not far behind with 280,500 chips.
After Day 1A’s miniscule turnout, about another 210 entries were paid on Day 1B, bringing the field up to a small, but not insulting, level. All players were permitted one initial entry and one re-entry per day; registration and another re-entry were also allowed on Day 2 until after the dinner break. Thus, the tournament saw about another 50 entries yesterday, bringing the total field to 323 entries. Of those 323 entries, 224 were players’ initial buy-ins and 99 were re-entries.
The total prize pool for the WPT Caribbean Main Event is $1,456,892, with 36 players seeing a payday. The winner will receive $335,000, which includes a $15,000 entry into the season-ending Tournament of Champions. Min-cash is $10,000.
As often happens in big tournaments, the chip leader rose to the top position late in the day. According to the WPT.com live report, Ankush Mandavia raised pre-flop, one player called, and Troy Quenneville re-raised. Both opponents called to bring on a flop of T-6-3. Action was checked to Quenneville, who threw out a 22,200 chip continuation bet. That wasn’t enough to force anyone out of the pot, so all three players saw a Queen dealt on the turn. After all three checked, the river was a 9. Mandavia bet 19,000 and again, nobody left the hand; both Quenneville and the other player called. Quenneville flipped over A-Q of spades for top pair, top kicker and that was apparently good enough, as both opponents mucked their cards.
That pot gave Quenneville the lead, growing his stack to nearly 400,000 chips. As you can tell by the end of day chip counts, he lost a chunk after that, but not so much that he fell out of the chip lead.
Should Quenneville hold on to at least make the money, it would be, by far, the largest live tournament cash of his career. According to TheHendonMob.com poker database, Quenneville has just two live cashes – accomplished this spring – for a total of less than $600.
The 28-year old Quenneville is originally from Ontario, Canada and now lives in Costa Rica. He attended Saginaw Valley State University where he competed on the men’s golf team.
Day 3 will begin at 3:00pm local time (2:00pm ET). That’s two hours earlier than yesterday, but Tournament Director Christian Scalzi was sure to go around to each table to let players know of the change in schedule. The plan is to play nine 60-minute levels on Tuesday; the money bubble should burst and the field should get close to the final table.
2016 World Poker Tour Caribbean – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1. Troy Quenneville – 302,000
2. Alexander Denisov – 280,500
3. Josef Snejberg – 255,500
4. Vishal Maini – 246,500
5. Robin Hegele – 240,000
6. Jean-Luc Adam – 240,000
7. Duff Charette – 237,000
8. Keven Stammen – 234,000
9. Ema Zajmovic – 230,500
10. Roberto Vahlis – 225,000
