The World Poker Tour (WPT) is visiting Venice in this week, its second stop in the beautiful Italian city in less than two months. This time, it’s for the WPT Venice Grand Prix, held at Casino di Venezia Ca Vendramin Calergi, the same venue as December’s WPT Venice. After two days, 27 players remain and just one – Marcel Bjerkmann – has more than 400,000 chips. At 436,300, he is more than 21 big blinds ahead of Mark Neumann, who will begin Day 3 with 384,400. After them, it’s a logjam through the next four spots, with less than 25,000 chips separating places three through six.
Like WPT Venice, which saw just 213 players register, the WPT Venice Grand Prix is small compared to other tour events, with only 155 runners plunking down the €4,500 buy-in plus €450 fee. As such, the total prize pool is €676,575 with €229,800 and a seat in the season-ending WPT World Championship going to the winner. Here is a breakdown of the entire payout structure:
1st – €229,800 + WPT World Championship seat
2nd – €111,700
3rd – €72,275
4th – €52,565
5th – €42,705
6th – €32,195
7th – €25,625
8th – €19,055
9th – €13,795
10th – 12th €9,855
13th – 15th – €8,540
16th-18th – €7,225
Marcel Bjerkmann does not have a lengthy record of live tournament cashes, but he makes up for it with quality. He has made just five journeys into the money starting in the fall of 2010, but every single one of them is a top-25 finish. He started out impressively, placing second in the 1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 2010 European Poker Tour (EPT) London stop, earning £58,334 ($91,287). Just a week later, he won the Belgian Open Poker Championship Main Event, banking €200,030 ($278,380). Bjerkmann’s hot streak continued the following month when he won the Master Classics of Poker 2010 Main Event. That title was worth double his previous victory: €403,380 or $571,984. All told, Marcel Bjerkmann has won just shy of $1 million in his live tournament career.
Day 3 will start up on Wednesday at 1:00pm local time as the remaining 27 players maneuver towards the money and try to position themselves for the final table. The scheduled plan is to narrow the field down to 18 players, though if the eliminations come fast and furious, tournament officials have the option to play all the way down to the final table.
World Poker Tour Venice Grand Prix – End of Day 2 Chip Counts
Marcel Bjerkmann – 436,300
Marko Neumann – 384,400
Jason Wheeler – 348,200
James Akenhead – 336,000
Andrey Gulyy – 326,000
Gianluca Trebbi – 323,500
Andrea Dato – 309,900
Gabriele Lepore – 233,200
Jeremie Sochet – 232,500
Alessandro Longobardi – 221,200
Giacomo Fundaro – 195,700
Rinat Bogdanov – 167,600
Massimo Mosele – 148,000
Erion Islamay – 140,600
Gianluca Speranza – 134,000
Dario De Paz – 94,900
Zoltan Szabo – 91,300
Andrea Carini – 83,000
Simon Ravnsbaek – 78,100
Guido Chiodo – 75,700
Kara Scott – 60,100
Giacomo Valenti – 50,500
Viachevslav Goryachev – 50,500
Konstantin Streletskiy – 44,400
Lionel Tran – 39,000
Maurizio Saieva – 38,800
Carla Solinas – 38,600
