The Australian poker community has voted with their feet, delivering arguably one of the strongest fields ever witnessed at The Star Gold Coast for the WPT Prime Gold Coast Mystery Bounty Event.
The field of 169 entries for yesterday’s Day 1A flight was comprised of some of the country’s most recognisable players, featuring Liam Murray, Corey Van Jaarsveldt, Dennis Huntly, Hussein Hassan, Brooke Colless, Daniel Gabriel and Australian Poker Hall of Famer Leo Boxell.
Leading at the end of day’s play was two-time APT Champion Dylan Wayne, who bagged 542,000 in chips, followed closely by Sal Fazzino on 505,000. Martin Ward (412,000), Alan Gates (303,000) and Daniel Gabriel (286,000), rounded out the top five.
Speaking with PokerMedia Australia at the end of night, Wayne was pleased that everything went so well for him and is hopeful that the trend will continue in two days’ time.
“It was quite interesting, actually, I flopped many, many sets, many many times and everything just kinda went my way,” he said. “I’ve been pretty excited to play in this one, you know … to be able to just reach into the barrel and pull out something huge is pretty cool, so I was always going to play this.”
“A lot of my friends and every one of them have been buzzing around the Mystery Bounty specifically. They love the new concept [in Australia] because offers so much excitement for both the recreational and full-time player.”
Other notables out of the 25 to have survived through to Day 2 included Lloyd Locsin, Omer Silajdzija, Jerry Wang, Ben Turner, Lucho Vargas, Mishel Anunu and WPT Prime Gold Coast $1,100 NLH Champion Romain Morvan.
WPT PRIME GOLD COAST MYSTERY BOUNTY – DAY 1A CHIP COUNTS
| Name | Chips |
| Dylan Wayne | 542,000 |
| Sal Fazzino | 505,000 |
| Martin Ward | 412,000 |
| Alan Gates | 303,000 |
| Daniel Gabriel | 286,000 |
| Lloyd Locsin | 245,000 |
| Matthew Radcliffe | 235,000 |
| Mark Zhu | 234,000 |
| Omer Silajdzija | 207,000 |
| Matthew Bevin | 205,000 |
| Cheng-Tse Chen | 188,000 |
| Tommy Handelaar | 186,000 |
| Alex Lee | 175,000 |
| Josh Hutchins | 150,000 |
| Jerry Wang | 149,000 |
| Ben Turner | 147,000 |
| Lucho Vargas | 133,000 |
| Julian Warhurst | 129,000 |
| Paul Neville | 128,000 |
| Tom Maguire | 112,000 |
| Chin Wang | 107,000 |
| Mishel Anunu | 100,000 |
| Scott Hamilton-Hill | 82,000 |
| Romain Morvan | 69,000 |
| Yang Lei | 40,000 |
Day 1B of the Mystery Bounty will kick off at 2:30pm AEST and PMA will be back ringside to bring you all the action, so be sure to tune in as we bring you every flop, sweat and tear until the final river falls.
well done