With $164,398 in career tournament earnings, Alex Rivera is one of Western New York's top tourney grinders.
Locally, his resume boasts tons of big cashes, including a 2012 Summer Slam title that marked the second biggest score of his career, just under the $22,538 he collected for his 2011 Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza win in Las Vegas.
Rivera actually led Day 1a of the 2014 edition of the Summer Slam Main Event before booking a 20th-place finish.
Here in 2015 he's off to the kind of start that might get him there again, having got it in with kings versus jacks to drag a massive pot and jump up among the early leaders.
Top local rounder Travell Thomas bagged up a short stack somewhere near 30,000 chips after 15 levels of play Friday.
Feeling like he can and will do better, he just fired another bullet, jumping in the second starting flight here in Level 6.
"It's not enough," he said of his Day 2 stack.
Thomas will be here Sunday for Day 2 no matter what happens, but he's taking advantage of the best-stack-forward structure here in the Summer Slam Main Event allowing players to fire on both starting days regardless of what they bag on the first in an attempt to turn up stacked.
Pittsburgh, PA resident Larry Pileggi has jumped into the lead here after a huge three-way all in pot.
Pileggi, Jason Zawacki and a third player got heaps in the middle on a flop with Pileggi on , Zawacki holding and the third player having the best of it with .
The turn came the giving Pileggi even more outs and the river was one of them, handing him the flush, the straight, the pot, the kitchen sink and the lead.