O'Neill and Reichard Put on Clinic as Both Bag over Half-Million Chips to Lead Day 1b
Day 1b of the HPT East Chicago $1,650 Main Event saw 169 entrants battle it out to attempt and advance to Day 2 along with the 20 players that made it through on Day 1a. After fifteen levels of play, Mike O'Neill leads the way with a massive 573,000 chips but Josh Reichard is right on his tail with 570,000 as 24 advance to Day 2. Both players put on a clinic while sitting at the same table for the last six levels of the night eliminating players left and right to bag over one million chips combined.
The closest player to O'Neill and Reichard is over 200,000 chips behind as Brek Schutten bagged 341,000 which is still a very healthy stack. Kyle Pikorz comes next as the only other player to crest 300k (334,000) and JBrett Apter's (288,000) rounds out the top five stacks.
Others advancing includes Roger McKinney (284,000), Kenneth Baime (260,000), Todd Sladek (227,000), Nick Davidson (125,000), Yoon Kim (113,000) and Mike Shin (108,000).
The field saw many notable faces unfortunate enough to advance to Day 2 which included Craig Casino, Chris Moon, Aaron Massey, Jacob Bazeley, Nick Pupillo, Shawn Roberts and reining HPT Player of the Year Aaron Johnson.
Johnson and the other players without Day 2 tickets will have one last chance to get a crack as Day 1c kicks off at noon local time on Saturday.
Come back to PokerNews to see what develops on the third and final starting day of the HPT Main Event.