2015 River Poker Series Main Event Day 1b: Cord Garcia Seizes Overall Chip Lead
Day 1b of the 2015 River Poker Series $2,500 Main Event from the WinStar World Casino was all about Cord Garcia. After an unsuccessful Day 1a on Friday, Garcia was back at it again on Saturday with another bullet. The second starting day turned out much more fruitful than the first, and Garcia went on to bag up the overall chip lead with an impressive 642,000.
Day 1b Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cord Garcia | 642,000 |
| 2 | Mark Eddleman | 555,000 |
| 3 | John Song | 555,000 |
| 4 | Jeff Heiberg | 445,000 |
| 5 | Ivan Primera | 427,000 |
| 6 | Tommy Vedes | 393,000 |
| 7 | Michael Merz | 393,000 |
| 8 | Scott Squyres | 356,000 |
| 9 | Dean Baranowski | 324,000 |
| 10 | Michael Wang | 307,000 |
Garcia was hot all day long, both with the cards he held and the way he played, everything always seemed to work out. But, he also had a few big obstacles thrown in his way as he made the push towards the finish line. One such instance came in Level 17 with the blinds at 2,500/5,000 with a 500 ante.
After having worked his stack up over 400,000 at the time, Garcia was very much in the lead over the rest of the field. It was then that he clashed with Jeff Kester, though, and the confrontation cost Garcia half his stack to vault Kester into the top spot. Not to be deterred, Garcia stuck to his guns. He even ramped up the aggression a little bit from there, quickly getting back to 300,000, then 400,000, and then all of a sudden he was over 500,000. The next thing anyone knew, Garcia was over 600,000, and that's where he finished out the day.
The two closest to Garcia on the leaderboard from Day 1b were Mark Eddleman and John Song, both of whom bagged up 555,000 in chips. Other notables still remaining were Tommy Vedes (393,000), Michael Wang (307,000), the aforementioned Kester (302,000), Jose Montes (282,000), Chris Tryba (262,000), and David Nicholson (221,000).
One of the players who will need to fire again is the 2012 champion of this event, Aaron Massey. On the final hand of the night, Massey was eliminated by Eddleman after he got it all in with an overpaid, but lost out to Eddleman's runner-runner flush. Massey joined the likes of Ari Engel, Barry Hutter, Jake Schindler, Allen Kessler, TJ Cloutier, Joe Ebanks, Nicholas Palma, Marvin Rettenmaier, and Matt Stout on the rail.
Day 1c will be the third and final starting flight, kicking off on Sunday at 12 p.m. local time. You can expect to see another few hundred entries added to this event, and plenty of those players who have failed to advance from Day 1a or 1b will be back to try again. So far, there were 27 survivors from Day 1a and 42 from Day 1b for a total of 69 players advancing to Monday's Day 2. So far, the event has generated 680 entries.
Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for live coverage of this event as the quest to find the next champion continues on.
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