Aden Salazar Claims Chip Lead After Day 1a of Event #9
Day 1a of Event #9: 750K GTD NLH is through for the day after 8 hours of play here at the Lodge Poker Club. The first flight attracted 112 entries, which played down to just 14 players (12%) at the end of the day.
Aden Salazar bagged the largest stack with a whopping 722,000 after he gathered most of it in the last couple of levels of the day, including the final elimination when he burst the bubble by taking out Shlomi Shriki.
Behind him by about 200,000 was Nathan Hays who bagged 523,000, who took the chip lead after the final break and looked poised to be chip leader before Salazar’s surge to top of the counts.
Day 1a Top 5 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Hometown | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Aden Salazar | Cleveland, TX | 722,000 | 90 |
| 2 | Nathan Hays | Kearney, NE | 523,000 | 65 |
| 3 | Jesus Cantu | Austin, TX | 459,000 | 57 |
| 4 | Vu Nguyen | Live Oak, TX | 299,000 | 37 |
| 5 | Andrew Ostapchenko | Long Beach, CA | 220,000 | 27.5 |
Jesus Cantu bagged up his stack of 459,000, which was good enough for third place in the counts at the end of the day. He was the beneficiary of a massive pot midway through the day when he cracked aces with runner-runner flush.
The top three stacks ended the day with over half of all chips in play. After that there was a significant gap as Vu Nguyen was next with 299,000 and Andrew Ostapchenko with 220,000 to round out the top five stacks.
Lori Gansel was the happiest player when the bubble burst as she was able to secure a cash with her short stack of 65,000.
The fourteen players will move on to Day 2, on Wednesday and join all the other advancing players from the upcoming five flights.
PokerNews will continue with coverage of Day 1b tonight and Days 1c and 1d tomorrow.
with a large pot of 58,000 already in the middle. Nathan Hays bet 35,000 from the button. Thurman Ragsdale took his time while playing with his chips before tossing one chip forward and saying all in. Hays called.
while Ragsdale had the 
. The turn was the 
and the river the 
to give Hays a huge pot and move toward the chip lead.
and both players got all their chips into the middle. 
which had the 
of Cantu drawing thin. One of the best turns in the deck in the 
gave Cantu lots of hope and the miracle 
river completed the runner-runner flush that catapulted Cantu into the lead to scoop the 200,000 chip pot and eliminate Sukhram.
