Everyone wants to have a perfect birthday. Birthdays are special! We only get, I don’t know, 100 to 150 of them in our lives? Chief Justice John Roberts just celebrated his by presiding over an impeachment trial, which would not qualify as a perfect birthday. But Patrick Serda certainly had one, as he ended Day 2 of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Winter Poker Open as the chip leader on the same day he turned 30-years old. Oh, to turn 30 again.
Serda finished Tuesday with 994,000 chips, not far ahead of Brian Altman, who has 923,000. Altman could become a story, as he’s going for back-to-back WPT titles, having just won the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open. Also above 900,000 is Nathan Russler, who has 914,000 chips. Nobody else has more than 800,000.
Patrick Serda is also gunning for another title. The Canadian, appropriately, won the WPT Montreal Main Event in 2018, picking up $652,801. That’s not his biggest live tournament cash, though. That came when he finished as the runner-up in the European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague High Roller for $750,216 in 2016. Those two cashes make up the majority of his career winnings of nearly $1.8 million.
‘It was a good day,” Serda told WPT.com at the end of the night. “It started off kind of slow, but I got hot right before dinner. After dinner was really good as well. I had a nice little spin-up on my birthday for sure.”
Serda’s most significant hand came at the expense of Brian Yoon in what was one hell of a cooler. The two players raised and re-raised each other until Yoon was all-in for 263,000 chips. You may have guessed the hands based on what I said in the first sentence of this paragraph: Yoon had Kings and Serda had Aces.
The board ended up Queen-high and Yoon was out of the tournament. In the meantime, Serda increased his stack to 760,000.
The total field closed at 1,290, not quite reaching last year’s number of 1,415. The pair of starting flights drew 1,065 entries, while 225 more entries were registered on Day 2. Keep in mind that the event allowed for unlimited re-entry through the second level of Day 2, so the 1,290 signifies the number of “entries” not “players.”
Today’s plan is to get down from 174 to 24 players, leaving three tables heading into Thursday’s Day 4. Action is currently underway in Atlantic City.
2020 World Poker Tour Borgata Winter Poker Open – Day 3 Chip Leaders
- Patrick Serda – 994,000
- Brian Altman – 923,000
- Nathan Russler – 914,000
- Abe Korotki – 788,000
- Peter Vitantonio – 782,000
- Shawn Cunix – 737,000
- Larry Abrams – 733,000
- Derek Marmen – 726,000
- Baitai Li – 719,000
- Stephen Press – 717,000
