Dan Smith Dominates Day 1 in Event #3 of Poker Masters
Day 1 has come to an end in Event #3 of the Poker Masters at the ARIA Resort and Casino. This is the third of four $50,000 tournaments with Dan Smith leading the way of the final table, bagging an impressive 1,982,000 chips.
Other players that will be moving on to the final table include Doug Polk, Jake Schindler, Sergio Aido, Cary Katz, and Erik Seidel. Also, Bryn Kenney will return for the second day in a row.
Smith was building up a big stack throughout the day and started to run away with the chip lead after he collided with Schindler in a big pot. Smith, Polk, and Schindler are all sitting comfortably over one million chips while the next closest is Bryn Kenney with just over 500,000.
The winner of Event #3 will move into the second spot on the leaderboard for The Poker Masters Purple Jacket. Steffen Sontheimer has first place locked up for now after winning Event #2 earlier in the day. The winner tomorrow will be taking home $960,000 while the remaining seven players are all guaranteed at least $96,000.
Unfortunately, there were many others that were unable to make it through the day unscathed and they include Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Nick Schulman, Fedor Holz, and Brian Rast.
Although he will maintain his first-place standing, Sontheimer was looking to extend his lead as he made a deep run today. Sontheimer made it to the final table bubble but was eliminated in eighth place. He got all of his money in the middle against Kenney and lost a flip, sending him home on the money bubble with nothing.
On Saturday, the Event #3 final table will be livestreamed on PokerGO with a 30-minute delay. The PokerNews coverage will be in sync with the live stream and the action will get underway at 12:30 p.m. local time.
Day 1 of Event #4: $50,000 NLHE will also start up on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be on site to bring you all of the live updates from that event as well.