Using a hotly contested hand that was the talk of the Day 2 action, Marc Macdonnell took a massive lead at the midpoint of the play and cruised into the chip lead of the World Poker Tour stop at the Dusk ‘til Dawn Casino in Nottingham, the United Kingdom, on Friday.
262 players came back to the tables, still not knowing what they were going to be playing for. With registration going on until the close of the second level of play on Friday, there was a chance that the official entries total would crack the guarantee of £1 million. In the end, it did come home for the hosts of Dusk ‘til Dawn, with 522 entries ensuring that the guaranteed amount was hit and setting out the payout schedule.
For the WPT Nottingham, 54 players would earn a piece of the £1 million, with the minimum payday of £4500 for those taking home a min-cash. The very flat pay schedule gives the person who will finish in sixth place at the official WPT final table a £40,000 payday. The top slot is where everyone wants to finish, however, with that player taking down the £200,000 first place prize and the seat at the Season XV WPT Tournament of Champions next spring.
As the day’s action played out, once again the focus of many was on the sideshow carnival act that has become William Kassouf. Kassouf, who was the focus of the late stages of the 2016 World Series of Poker Championship Event, was up to his usual shenanigans at the start of Day 2 of the WPT Nottingham. It worked for a bit as he climbed over the 100K mark in chips, but his demise was almost as delicious to watch as his dismissal from the WSOP was on ESPN.
Kassouf would lose much of his stack to a player who, while Kassouf’s mouth motored along, flopped a straight flush and Kassouf paid off his all-in. “Turn and river are an off-suit queen and off-suit king and I’ve rivered the nut straight with J-10,” Kassouf reported to the WPT Updates team. “He’s got 3♥ 2♥ for the straight flush. Calls a raise with three-high, marvelous.” Kassouf would pitch in his final chips holding another J-10 and see the K-4-3-A-5 board blank, giving the hand to Karl McDonald and his pocket nines.
For those that weren’t distracted by the sideshow act, they would have seen some pretty good poker played out of Macdonnell. He was able to build a sizeable stack after defeating both Alex Goulder and Ludovic Geilich when he hit a royal flush, then would increase that stack in rivering a full house against Simon Higgins when Macdonnell’s pocket sevens found gold on a 7-2-5-Q-Q board against Higgins’ A-Q. Those chips earned would give Macdonnell a monster stack heading to Saturday’s play.
Marc Macdonnell, 974,000
Alex Ward, 534,000
Seamus Cahill, 501,000
Ben Windsor, 497,000
Alex Zeligman, 489,000
Sondre Sagstuen, 476,000
Christopher Yong, 431,000
Marc Foggin, 422,000
Patrick Leonard, 418,000
Kuljinder Sidhu, 414,000
The remaining 61 players will return on Saturday afternoon with a sizeable bit of work in front of them. First, they will have to pop the money bubble at 54 players, meaning seven people will walk away with nothing but a story from the WPT Nottingham. After that bubble has popped, the more difficult task of getting to the six-handed WPT final table will be in play. At this time, the plans are for the final table to be played on Sunday (and live streamed on WPT.com and their Twitch channel), but that could be subject to change.
