Tepen Bags Day 1a Lead as 15 Advance

Day 1a of 2015 RunGood Poker Series Council Bluffs Main Event, the first stop of four on the Road to the RunGood Cup, drew 80 runners for $675 apiece. When it was all said and done, 15 of them advanced to Sunday's Day 2 after 13 levels of play.

Tour-sponsored pro Ryan Tepen bagged the biggest stack with 176,500. Tepen has accumulated more than $688,000 in cashes over a live poker career stretching back to 2008. His home tour has been kind to him as he finished 10th at a different RunGood event here earlier this year for $4,298 and got fifth at RunGood Downstream a month prior to that for $9,635.

Jon Lawson raced out to an early lead, amazingly running his 20,000 starting stack up nearly 120,000 by the first break. He looked a strong favorite to bag the lead for much of the day, but a brutal beat late derailed his efforts.

On a board of , Mike Tang bet from the cutoff seat and snap-called when Lawson check-shipped all in from the blinds to put Tang at risk for about his last 60,000 or so. Tang had the , and Lawson had .

Tang, who finished second at RunGood Downstream in 2014, got the help he needed when he spiked quads on the river.

Lawson still managed to put 95,500 in the bag, while Tang ended the night with 137,500. Other notables to advance included Josh Reichard (154,000), RunGood Pro Michael Sanders (136,500), Nick Manganaro (122,500), Terry Karn (110,500), Clint Lilienthal (101,000), and RunGood Pro Jamie Kerstetter (77,000).

Eric Rodawig, Bryan Campanello, Mike Lang, Mark Fink, Jeff Bryan, Brandon Fish, plus RunGood Pros Jonathan Gaviao, Jose Montes, Justin Gardenhire, Chris Conrad, and Ross Bybee were some of the notables who busted during the course of play.

Bybee, who already has a RunGood main event win to his credit, had ran up a nice early stack before his aces got cracked. He then lost the rest with all in preflop against Tang's .