The 2015 World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Winter Poker Open guaranteed a $3,000,000 prize pool and thanks to an active Day 1B, it just made it past that threshold. After 360 players entered on Day 1A, another 629 registered on Monday, bringing the total field to 989. With the $3,300 buy-in (another $200 fee went to the house) and less the 3 percent taken out for dealer tips, the prize pool looks to be $3,165,789 (the official numbers have not been published yet). According to the tournament’s payout structure, the winner will take home north of $712,000, less $15,400, which will go towards his or her seat in the WPT Championship.
Matt Itkin leads the 328 Day 1B survivors with 221,200 chips, putting him about 30,000 behind Day 1A leader and 2013 WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open champ, Andy Hwang. Itkin is a regional player from nearby Oceanside, New York, about a three hour drive away from Atlantic City. He does not have much of a live tournament resume of which to speak, but then again, it is certainly more impressive than this writer’s (I have a grand total of one live tourney cash and it isn’t even listed on TheHendonMob.com). Most of his cashes are in smaller tournaments in Atlantic City and other casinos in the region.
Despite all the action in the poker room on Monday, the story of the day was probably the impending blizzard that was set to blast the east coast. Tons of schools in the region were already closed for Tuesday and thousands of flights had been cancelled. Of biggest concern to players, though, was that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had issued a statewide travel ban starting at 11:00pm Monday. That meant that anybody who was playing in the tournament and was not planning on staying at the Borgata overnight had to make a decision as to whether to leave early and be blinded down or pay for a hotel room. On top of that, with the tournament to resume at noon Tuesday, what if the roads are a mess? Will players from Day 1A be able to get to the Borgata?
As it turned out, the feared storm did not hit the south Jersey area very hard and the travel ban was lifted at 7:45am Tuesday. Certainly, there will be people who will shake their fists at the meteorologists for a false alarm, but as someone whose brother got stuck in his car for 23 hours during the Atlanta “Snowpocalypse” almost exactly a year ago, I have problem with the “better safe than sorry route.”
Looks like everything should be fine for Day 2.
2015 World Poker Tour Borgata Winter Poker Open – Day 1B Chip Leaders
1. Matt Itkin – 221,200
2. Barry Hutter – 191,300
3. Eric Doerr – 177,700
4. Cathy Dever – 169,600
5. Brent Roberts – 167,400
6. Walter Fisher – 166,400
7. Anthony Zinno – 162,000
8. Troy Skinner – 155,000
9. Aaron Mermelstein – 145,000
10. Matthew Waxman – 116,000
11. Andrew Spears – 111,200
2015 World Poker Tour Borgata Winter Poker Open – Combined Day 1 Chip Leaders
1. Andy Hwang – 251,300
2. Matt Itkin – 221,200
3. Daniel Wach – 209,900
4. Daniel Fischer – 208,000
5. Jason Helder – 200,800
6. Barry Hutter – 191,300
7. Sebastian Tejada – 180,500
8. Eric Doerr – 177,700
9. John Moore – 177,700
10. Cathy Dever – 169,600
