Saifur Chowdhury Leads Moneymaker Tour, Newcastle Day 1b; Tour's Eponymous Pro Also Through to Day 2
The second starting flight in the ￡140 Moneymaker Road to the PSPC Tour Main Event at Aspers, Newcastle, played out almost exactly as yesterday’s, with 81 total entries mirroring the 79 attracted on Day 1a. There were many new faces at the tables, however, not least that of Chris Moneymaker himself, who arrived dressed in a full shark onesie and after a bumpy day has made it through to Day 2 (with 128,000 chips) along with 15 others.
Leading Day 1b’s survivors is Saifur Chowdhury, whose 393,500 chips put him in second overall, behind yesterday’s top stacker William Robinson (433,500). Quite a gap separates Chowdhury from his nearest chip rival Ryan Kilbey (242,500), with most of the survivors’ stacks bunched somewhere in between one and two hundred thousand (more below the average stack than above it). For any super-short survivors, the option exists to surrender one’s stack and play again on another flight, but not to choose the highest of multiple stacks.
Playing today but busting before the final whistle were Jeff Kimber, Jonathan Prested, Paul Simmons, Matthew Gray and early chip leader (and online qualifier) Alexander Scales. They all have two more days (with two re-entries allowed in each) to build a fresh stack to take them through to Day 2 (Sunday at noon).
While the school-night flights have been action-packed, if contained on six tables, attendance is set to skyrocket with tomorrow’s Day 1c. Extra tables have been drafted in to accommodate the Friday and Saturday influx of players keen to take part in such a prestigious event at this buy-in level with the huge added incentive of a PSPC Platinum Pass, worth €26,000, for the winner.
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