The plan for Sunday’s Day 2 of the World Poker Tour (WPT) bestbet Bounty Scramble was to play through the money bubble, meaning the field would be shaved from 142 players to fewer than 48. That was no problem, apparently, as at the end of the night, just 25 players remained. Noah Schwartz is leading the charge to the final table, currently the chip leader with 949,000.
The top ten is an extremely competitive group, after Schwartz, there is Marvin Rettenmaier with 862,000 chips; both players are past WPT champs. Also in the top ten are Byron Kaverman, Ankush Mandavia, and Tyler Patterson. Rettenmaier, Kaverman, Patterson, and Garrett Greer are all bounties – if they are eliminated, the player who knocked them out receives $2,500 and an autographed bestbet bounty medallion.
Schwartz solidified his chip lead late in the evening. Already holding the tallest stack in the tournament, he called a 41,000 chip all-in by Jean Gaspard, the Day 1A chip leader, with the flop showing T-5-4. Richard Grant also stayed in the hand. The two checked it down after a 3 on the turn and a 9 on the river (producing a heart flush possibility). Once the betting (or non-betting, as it were) was completed, Gaspard turned over J-T for top pair, but Schwartz also had top pair with a Queen to go along with it, giving him a better kicker than Gaspard and thus kicking (you see what I did there?) him out of the tournament. Grant mucked his hand, forcing us to live with our curiosity about his hole cards going unsatisfied. Gaspard finished in 28th place, good for $9,453.
The six-handed final table will be determined tonight. As mentioned, the top of the leader board is tough, so the play should be very high quality. Add to that a bunch of fairly even chip stacks at the very top – after Schwartz, four players have more than 800,000 chips – and there could be some serious jockeying to try to get position for a run to the championship. Only 19 eliminations will be required to get to the final table, but with the quality of players involved, I would not be surprised if it is a late night (though it could go the complete other direction as I remain non-committal).
This will be the last WPT event in the United States for a while. After this, it’s off to the UK, Montreal, the Dominican Republic, and Prague before returning to Las Vegas in December. Come to think of it, that is an awful lot of poker in only about a month and a half.
2016 World Poker Tour bestbet Bounty Scramble – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1. Noah Schwartz – 949,000
2. Marvin Rettenmaier – 862,000
3. Sam Panzica – 842,000
4. TK Miles – 820,000
5. Byron Kaverman – 809,000
6. Jake Schwartz – 722,000
7. Ankush Mandavia – 664,000
8. Michael Robilotto – 610,000
9. Paul Balzano – 586,000
10. Tyler Patterson – 464,000
