The 2015 Seneca Niagara Falls Summer Slam continued this evening with the fourth of six starting flights in Event #3, a $50 No-Limit Hold'em tournament with a $25,000 guarantee.
This flight drew a total of 170 entries, playing down to just 19 remaining players as Level 15 came to a close. John Stempien built a big stack early, but lost a massive hand with an overpair to Tom Babiarz' two pair handing him the chip lead as the day wore on.
Babiarz kept his foot on the gas, even busting three players in the final five hands and bagging 254,700 and the chip lead by the time play was through.
In fact, Babiarz has taken the overall lead by some 50,000 chips, joining Day 1a chip leader Kyle Jeffery as the only player over 200,000 in chips.
These 19 survivors will join the 57 from the first three flights to come back and play down to a champion Thursday. In the meantime, the event will continues with the fifth and sixth of six starting flights beginning at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. local time Wednesday.
Tune in to PokerNews at that time for updates of all the action live from the floor of the poker room at Seneca Niagara.
Brett "Roscoe" Short made it 5,500 from under the gun and the player in the player in the small blind called before the big blind shoved some 40,000.
Short called with and after the small blind folded, the big blind was forced to show the bluffy . Short hit a king and pushed up to a spot among the chip leaders late.
John Stempien's loose image appears to be paying huge dividends here as he just became the massive chip leader in a series of two hands.
First he made made top pair with and got one player to stack off with . Then, he got one player with middle pair and another with bottom pair to give him their stacks after he flopped the top pair again, holding .
No one has had this many chips this early in any of the three previous starting flights for this event and it will be interesting to see if Stempien will hang on to the stack or spew the chips off.
Grand Island, NY's Dave Grana has grabbed the early lead thanks to a little good fortune.
First he rivered a full house against a turned straight to double up. Then he made it 450 over one limper and called it off with when a third player pushed in a short stack with .