Tony Nguyen Bags Day 1b Chip Lead in HPT Daytona Beach Main Event
Day 1b of the Heartland Poker Tour $1,100 Main Event at the Daytona Beach Racing and Card Club has now completed. The second flight saw a total of 151 registration slips sold and of those sold, only 22 found a bag by the end of the night.
Tony Nguyen ended the night atop the leaderboard with a hearty stack of 405,000 which was not only good enough for the Day 1b lead, but also good enough to take the overall lead moving forward into thus far.
Nguyen hovered above average for the first part of the day and really started to blossom during the latter stages. One pot in particular that catapulted him towards his final destination was against Toby Boas who held aces on the button and fired in a four-bet before the flop. Nguyen called with his pair of nickels and spiked a five on the flop, giving him a set and the rest is history as Boas headed home, setting the stage for Nguyen.
The first flight had one player finish over the 300,000 mark and today on Day 1b there were plenty with Sean Iannucci (355,000), Paul Chung (323,000), Miguel Hernandez (321,000), Dan Gannon (316,000), and Charles Johnson (308,000) all hitting that feat.
Many other notable drops their chips in a bag at the end of the night and that list includes Michael Rossitto (214,000), Raminder Singh (188,000), Carlos Guerrero (183,000), Jason Kapoor (179,000), David Jackson (175,000), and Grey Raymer (152,000).
The 22 players that advanced will combine with those who survived the first flight, as well as tomorrow's Day 1c flight. Players will return on Sunday, October 26 to battle it out for a shot at a final table birth.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be here to bring you all of the updates in the HPT Daytona Beach Main Event, so stay tuned as all of the action unfolds.