The partnership between the World Poker Tour and Star Entertainment Group continues to go from strength to strength, breaking through the $1 million prize pool barrier in the inaugural WPT Prime Main Event held on Aussie soil.
A stellar field of 408 runners were taken in for Flight 1C of the $1,500 buy-in tournament at The Star Gold Coast, with the million-dollar milestone reached midway through the third level of the day before being locked out at 896 entries, for a total prize pool worth $1,176,680.
It also marked another record-setting event for Star Poker, which now holds the honour of hosting both the largest WPT Prime Main Event to date, as well as the global record for entries taken in for the WPTDeepStacks Sydney Main Event back in April.
Leading at the end of day’s play was Melbourne’s Ankit Dahiya, who bagged up 600,000 straight. The 33-year-old former croupier was ecstatic to be back playing poker again and is hopeful of achieving yet another big result tomorrow.
“I cashed here in 2019 at the WPT Australia Main Event after getting my big break in Las Vegas,” Dahiya said. “I got my big break after I finished 44th [out of 5,521 entries] in the WSOP Mini Main Event and that was after finishing 372nd in the Colossus – my first time playing poker professionally.”
WPT PRIME GOLD COAST MAIN EVENT DAY 1B – TOP 10 CHIP COUNTS (408 entries, 58 survivors)
| Ankit Dahiya | 600,000 |
| Ruiyang Wang | 519,000 |
| Darcy Mendoza | 486,000 |
| Yang Lei | 435,000 |
| Adrian Indovino | 404,000 |
| Mina Elias | 396,000 |
| Rod Batoz | 384,000 |
| Louis Wong | 376,000 |
| Mark Staples | 356,000 |
| Harry Vlazakis | 337,000 |
In all, a total of 125 players will return for Day 2 today. The top 112 players will be paid out a minimum of $2,434, while the winner will receive a top prize of $201,763, plus a seat into the WPT World Championship in Las Vegas and an additional flights and accommodation package courtesy of the WPT.
PokerMedia Australia’s social media coverage of the Main Event continues from 11:30am AEST on Sunday 19 June via Facebook and Instagram; live updates for this tournament are available at worldpokertour.com.
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