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The first of three starting days of the 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open Championship has concluded with 24 players remaining out of 89 entries in the flagship tournament of the series at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. With a price tag of $2,700, the crown jewel of the festival boasts a guarantee of $1 million and another two flights remain for players to join the action along with option to buy in before the start of Day 2 on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.
Upon completion of ten levels of 60 minutes each, Lewis Esposito topped the leaderboard by some margin after bagged up an impressive 425,500, more than ten and a half times the starting stack. His nearest follower is George St. Lawrence whereas another four players are then closely bunched together within two big blinds.
Among those is also Vittorio Abbate, who won his entry in a Poker4Life charity event in New York City last month and parlayed it into the fifth-largest stack of 226,000 after Day 1a thus far.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 1a
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | BB Day 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lewis Esposito | United States | 425,500 | 170 |
| 2 | George St. Lawrence | United States | 288,000 | 115 |
| 3 | Eric Starker | United States | 228,500 | 91 |
| 4 | Colin Moll | United States | 227,000 | 91 |
| 5 | Vittorio Abbate | United States | 226,000 | 90 |
| 6 | Xiaoqiong Liu | United States | 221,500 | 89 |
| 7 | Andrew Porter | United States | 204,500 | 82 |
| 8 | Gregory Bauer | United States | 193,000 | 77 |
| 9 | Emily Sun | United States | 165,000 | 66 |
| 10 | Jean Augustin | United States | 162,000 | 65 |
The only BetMGM ambassador to join the opening flight was Darren Elias, who made it through with one bullet and bagged up 79,000 in chips. Other notables outside of the top ten to advance were Charles Hook (114,000), Brandon Mueller (74,000), as well as Nicholas Funaro (50,500).
Esposito was down to as little as 16,000 when he got away from an overpair against Gregory Bauer which the latter bemoaned later on in table chat before Esposito won a series of larger pots to become the commanding chip leader. The largest of them all came in an all-in showdown against Robert Ozello when his flopped set of nines had Ozello's ace-king for top pair and top kicker in dire shape. Just before the final hands of the night, Esposito also sent Jordan Glazer to the rail to cement his lead by some margin.
Four of the 24 survivors on Day 1a were women led by Xiaoqiong Liu (221,500) and she was followed on the overnight leaderboard by Emily Sun (165,000), Sharman Olshan (65,500), as well as Kathy Saraf (51,000).
Other notables to come and go without anything to show for but expensive buy-in slips were 2025 Borgata Fall Poker Open Championship winner Matthew Zambanini, Danny Vo, Thomas Laviano, Benedetto Bianco, Jason Kluska, and Jason Nguyen to name all but a few casualties of Day 1a. They all have another two flights to try and run up a stack, both of which are set to commence at 12.15 p.m. local time on the following two days.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to cover all of the action throughout the entire remainder of the 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open Championship until a winner has been crowned on July 31, 2026.
