Three days down, two to go at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Parx Open Poker Classic. Just 16 players remain. The $416,127 first prize can be seen on the horizon, but there is still a ways to go to even see the big bucks. The next seven players eliminated won’t even cash for $20,000 (a sum most of us would gladly accept, but most of us aren’t playing in a World Poker Tour event) and only the top four will make six figures. One of the players who looks to be in the best position to make a run at the title is Tony Gregg, sitting pretty with 2.786 million chips, a full million more than the next closest competitor.
The great thing about poker is that success on a given day can be had in any number of ways. Skill is always good, of course, but a bit of luck can be just as nice. So what got Gregg that huge lead? Let’s check out a tweet from Vinny Pahuja, currently sitting in 13th place:
“Wow Tony just got super lucky in 2 enormous pots to take massive chip lead. Full redraw at 18. Joe Wertz and BBoy on my left. 615k at 12k”
How lucky is “super lucky?” Well, we don’t know how both the referenced hands went, but here is one of them:
Henry Lu was all-in pre-flop with A♦-Q♥ , up against Gregg’s A♠-Q♣. Same hands, chopped pot, no problem. Time to move on to the next hand. But the flop still needed to be dealt, so let’s see…Q♠-7♠-2♠. Now it’s getting interesting. Now there’s something to sweat. The turn: 2♣. And the river…J♠. Stomach punch to Henry Lu. What looked like an innocent chopped pot situation turned into one of the toughest ways to be eliminated from a tournament. He still won over $10,000, but that was likely little consolation for him at that moment. In the meantime, Tony Gregg grew his stack to over 2 million chips on his way to a dominant chip lead.
It wasn’t all luck for Gregg, though. Earlier in the evening, he took a 600,000 chip pot from the same Henry Lu with a well-timed bluff on the river. The board showed Q♥-J♦-T♣-6♥-5♠ and Gregg put his final 388,000 chips into the middle. Lu pondered a call for several minutes before finally folding his set of Tens. Gregg showed the table A♠-T♥. Sometimes skill wins the day, too.
Day 4 of the WPT Parx Open Poker Classic will begin at noon ET Tuesday and will continue until the official six-handed final table is determined.
World Poker Tour Parx Open Poker Classic – End of Day 3 Chip Counts
- Tony Gregg – 2,786,000
- Joseph Wertz – 1,753,000
- Robert Pyne – 1,491,000
- Joseph Couden – 1,433,000
- Stephen Reynolds – 1,413,000
- Chris Lee – 1,148,000
- Tom Miller – 998,000
- Lawrence Sharp – 710,000
- Brent Roberts – 592,000
- Kevin Calenzo – 516,000
- Athanasios Polychronopoulos – 498,000
- Chris Vandeursen – 480,000
- Vinny Pahuja – 471,000
- Alan Kraut – 276,000
- Andre Nyffeler – 170,000
- Timothy Chang – 142,000
