WPT: Borgata Poker Open Day 1

Day 1 of the Borgata Poker Open

Boasting a $5 million guarantee, the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open needed a total of 521 players in order to avoid an overlay. However, due to the high volume of tournaments around the world, what was once considered an easy accomplishment for one of the most popular stops on tour actually became a bit of a scramble. Satellites were still running hours into the tournament, and registration was held open until the end of the fourth level. The end result was a field of 516 players, meaning that Borgata was on the hook for a $50,000 overlay.

Soon after registration had closed, the payouts were announced as follows:

1st: $1,425,500
2nd: $750,000
3rd: $387,500
4th: $337,500
5th: $287,500
6th: $237,500
7th: $187,500
8th: $137,500
9th: $100,000
10th-12th: $65,000
13th-15th: $47,500
16th-18th: $32,500
19th-27th: $26,000
28th-36th: $21,000
37th-45th: $17,500
46th-54th: $15,000

The Sunday starting day meant two things. The first was that the field featured a considerably smaller number of online players than normal. The second was that many of the best players in the game weren’t able to participate in PokerStars' $25,000 World Championship of Online Poker heads-up no-limit hold'em event. Still, two players did their best to pull off a double duty, playing in both the live and online tournament.

Victor Ramdin and Scott “gunning4you” Seiver both ran the long distance to their hotel rooms multiple times in order to play their respective matches. Both players won their first two matches and proceeded to trek down to the Borgata convention center to make up for lost time. In the end, Seiver was beaten in the Sweet Sixteen of the WCOOP event by Gavin Griffin, finishing just outside the money. Ramdin advanced, but was beaten by Griffin in the Elite Eight and cashed for $100,000. Of course, the dual play was made possible thanks to a structure change by the Borgata tournament staff.

The Borgata Poker Open has always been a tour favorite among the players for its incredibly slow-moving blind structure and starting stacks of 30,000 in chips. This year, tournament director Tab Duchateau implented even deeper stacks and players began with 40,000 in chips, a staggering 800 big blinds.

Some of the bigger stacks ending the day were Onofrio Reina (256,000), Brandon Cantu (182,000), Thayer Rasmussen (170,000), Jonathan Little (165,000), and Joe Sebok (155,000).

Join us tomorrow as day 2 continues with the remaining 310 players. Card Player continues to bring you the best live updates, videos, photos, and chip counts straight from the tournament floor.

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