With the $100,000 High Roller Event coming to a close, Tuesday was time for the 2014 European Poker Tour (EPT) PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event to begin, the first big Main Event of the year. The PCA is always a highly anticipated poker festival, as it not only kicks off the year, but has also become the most popular poker series outside of the World Series of Poker. What started essentially as a live destination for PokerStars.com qualifiers has become a major worldwide poker event.
Day 1A was the first of two starting flights; 295 players showed up for this one. Emerging as the chip leader was Dylan Hortin with 160,500 chips. He is followed closely by Victor Levy with 150,100 and Sam Greenwood with 132,500. 190 players moved on to Thursday’s Day 2, where they will meet the survivors from today’s Day 1B.
Hortin, from Salt Lake City, is a relative unknown on the live tournament circuit, though he has racked up almost half a million dollars. He has no tourney wins and his best live cash came in one of the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em events at the WSOP, where he placed fourth for $139,258. Even with his relatively low lifetime earnings number (then again, wouldn’t most of us kill for that record?), he is fourth on the all-time Utah money list, probably because Utah is one of two states with no legalized gambling and thus very few poker players with thoughts of making money actually live there. To satisfy your curiosity, according to TheHendonMob.com, Devin Porter is the all-time winningest Utahn with just over a million dollars.
Though he had bigger hands, perhaps the highlight of Hortin’s day came late in Level 3. As told by PokerNews.com, reporting what JC Alvarado told them, Hortin had opened the betting with a 600 chip pre-flop raise. Former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas tried to make the call by tossing out two chips, but he apparently misread the denominations, as the two chips were valued at T1,000 and T100. Thus, it was ruled that Arenas had re-raised to 1,100. Hortin four-bet it to 5,000 and Arenas moved all-in for 27,000, a bet which Hortin quickly called. It was pretty apparent when the cards were revealed which person was a poker player and which was a basketball player already with insane amounts of money who was simply playing poker. Hortin had pocket Queens, while Arenas had decided to shove with Q-J. Though Arenas flopped J-T-9, he couldn’t get any more help and was eliminated from the tournament.
Day 1B is getting ready to begin at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas as another group of players tries to begin a run towards the final table.
2014 European Poker Tour (EPT) PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event – Day 1A Chip Leaders
1. Dylan Hortin – 160,500
2. Victor Levy – 150,100
3. Sam Greenwood – 132,500
4. Joseph Cheong – 127,800
5. Jack Schanbacher – 126,800
6. Timothy Ulmer – 125,000
7. Ryan Hughes – 119,400
8. Shayam Srinivasan – 118,800
9. Jorge Luiz Ribeiro – 118,400
10. Jonathan Driscoll – 115,500
