Mark Fester has announced his arrival from the Harbour City in style, finishing as the overall chip leader after Day 1A of the WPT Prime Gold Coast Main Event.
The Sydney-based lawyer, who made headlines last year after winning the biggest WPTDeepStacks Main Event in global history, finished the day with 570,000 in chips after taking out $1,850 8-Max Champion Adrian Sportelli in the first and only hand on the bubble.
As reported last night at WPT.com, Sportelli open-shoved his last 66,000 from the hijack with K♥7♥ before Fester called him down from the big blind, turning over A♠10♥ which drilled two pair on the board A♦5♠5♣6♣8♣.
Tim O’Shea, Jack Hardcastle, Attila Bognar and Jenaro Sodicta rounded out the top five from the 34 survivors advancing to Day 2, with $5K Challenge Champion Angel Guillen, Alex Lee, Naoto Takeya, Steven Hoek and Po Hu amongst the other notables still in contention.
In line with all other WPT global events, all Day 1 flights in the WPT Prime Gold Coast Main Event will play down to the top 12.5% of the field, with the clock being wound back to the earliest blind level at the start of Day 2.
WPT PRIME GOLD COAST MAIN EVENT: DAY 1A CHIP COUNTS (270 entries, 34 survivors)
| Name | Chips |
| Mark Fester | 570,000 |
| Tim O’Shea | 530,000 |
| Jack Hardcastle | 528,000 |
| Attila Bognar | 482,000 |
| Jenaro Sodicta | 426,000 |
| Naoto Takeya | 425,000 |
| Ted Hatzakortzian | 417,000 |
| Alex Lee | 364,000 |
| Hamish Crawshaw | 309,000 |
| Angel Guillen | 278,000 |
| Steven Hoek | 271,000 |
| Peter Robertson | 260,000 |
| Mario Faure | 251,000 |
| William Xiao | 208,000 |
| Lawrence Stephenson | 207,000 |
| Qi Shen | 206,000 |
| Georgina Vuksanovic | 203,000 |
| Silvio Morello | 195,000 |
| Po Hu | 183,000 |
| Jordan Tentori | 174,000 |
| Jai Duffy | 156,000 |
| Micheal Hill | 155,000 |
| John Doringer | 151,000 |
| Milan Stojkovic | 139,000 |
| Mark Betts | 117,000 |
| Matthew Evans | 114,000 |
| Fotios Manolakos | 112,000 |
| Pedro Fernandez | 110,000 |
| David Feeney | 109,000 |
| Didier Guerin | 107,000 |
| Nigel Kwok | 98,000 |
| David Bonadio | 89,000 |
| Rod Meneses | 71,000 |
| Anthony Fullgrabe | 51,000 |
In other news, 18 survivors have bagged through to Day 2 of the $3K PLO, while Mystery Bounty heads-up combatants Justin Chu and Kevin Lee have been forced into a third day and will also return tomorrow morning (Friday) to battle it out for the remaining $153,037 in prize money.
PokerMedia Australia will resume its Live Reporting coverage for both tournaments from 11:30am AEST, with live updates for the Main Event available at WPT.com from 2:30pm AEST.
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