Mourad Amokrane Tops Day 1 Of Event #71: $1,500 Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha
Today saw the start of Event #71: $1,500 Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. The tournament drew 860 entries, generating a prize pool of $718,100. A min-cash is worth $1,512, for 129 players getting in the money, with the winner of the event taking home a prestigious WSOP gold bracelet and the $132,844 first prize.
Play began with players busting quickly as bounty hunters claimed heads from a frantic start to a frenetic finish, with the tournament clock reading just 94 players at the end of the day.
When the dust settled, it was French Mourad Amokrane that bagged the chip lead with a massive stack of 1,066,00,000, being the first player to reach the 1 million chip-mark after busting a few players in the last 20 minutes of the night. Amokrane, who travelled from Europe only a few days ago, is cashing the first WSOP event of his career in Las Vegas.
| RANK | PLAYER | COUNTRY | CHIP COUNT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mourad Amokrane | France | 1,066,000 |
| 2 | Jaime Lewin | United States | 712,000 |
| 3 | Nikolay Yosifov | Bulgaria | 674,000 |
| 4 | Felix Borden | United States | 650,000 |
| 5 | Miltiadis Kyriakides | Austria | 578,000 |
| 6 | Kirk Dillon | Canada | 492,000 |
| 7 | Paulo Villena | Spain | 483,000 |
| 8 | Ryan Coon | United States | 468,000 |
| 9 | Blake Napierala | United States | 461,000 |
| 10 | Manuel Ruivo | Portugal | 448,000 |
Jaime Lewin looks to be close to the top as he bagged 712,000 chips and he is followed closely by Nikolay Yosifov (674,000). Other players who bagged big stacks at the end of the night include Miltiadis Kyriakides (578,00), two-time bracelet winner Calvin Anderson (525,000), Paulo Villena (483,000) and Craig Mason (352,00).
Many notables players navigated their way through the Day 1 field and advanced to Day 2, such as Alex Rocha (240,000), who eliminated Nohad Teliani with a straight on the river to burst the bubble, but also Dash Dudley (183,100), Felipe Ramos (144,000), Diogo Veiga (119,000), Dario Sammartino (111,000) and tree-time bracelet winner Davidi Kitai (70,000).
While Day 2 will see many notable faces return some were less fortunate, those players include bracelet winners Brandon Shack-Harris, Asi Moshe, Leif Force, Nicholas Seiken, Eric Froehlich, Yuval Bronshtein, Ryan Hughes, Ian Steinman and Daniel Negreanu.
Day 2 will have a 3 p.m restart with action picking up on level 15 where blinds will be 3,000/ 5,000. Blind levels will be 60-minutes long and players will receive a 15-minute break after every two levels along with a 60-minute dinner break at the end of level 21.
Tune in here tomorrow as the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will provide coverage throughout the rest of the entire tournament.