Ivan Zhang Leads Six Remaining Players After Day 1 of $25,000 8-Handed
It was a rather uneventful Day 1 of Event #12: $25,000 8-Handed in the Super High Roller Series of The Lord Poker Tournament (TLPT) — that is until the final two levels of the night. A total of 14 entries have been recorded thus far in the final event of the series at the Landing Casino at Jeju Shinhwa World Resort in Jeju, South Korea.
Among those 14 entries, many players were forced to use a second bullet throughout the day. However, Ivan Zhang managed to last an entire 10 levels on just a single bullet on his way to a substantial chip lead over the remaining six players still in the event. A fiery last couple of levels in the night produced a wealth of chips for Zhang who bagged up a stack of 1,066,000 chips.
Zhang, a co-founder of the TLPT, has been a staple at all of the tournaments in this High Roller series with a final table finish in the Main Event where he wound up in sixth place. Deemed as a "cash-game player" by himself, Zhang only plays a few tournaments per year but has accumulated over $500,000 in tournament winnings throughout his career. The talkative Zhang will be looking to add to his resume tomorrow and possibly record a new best live tournament score.
Day 1 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivan Zhang | China | 1,066,000 | 133 |
| 2 | Quan Zhou | China | 743,000 | 93 |
| 3 | Dominik Nitsche | Germany | 526,000 | 66 |
| 4 | Gary Thompson | Ireland | 227,000 | 28 |
| 5 | Lei Yu | China | 159,000 | 20 |
| 6 | Ami Barer | Canada | 79,000 | 10 |
The action on Day 1 got started with just four players taking their seats in the opening level. Dominik Nitsche joined the other co-founders of TLPT Quan Zhou and Dong Chen when the cards went in the air. Chips were slow moving through the opening levels as others Ami Barer, Gary Thompson, and Marius Gierse eventually joined the field.
Zhou got himself off to a hot start by taking the early chip lead and leaving both Nitsche and Thompson on short stacks - both of whom were forced to reenter post-dinner break. Nitsche went on to build a heaping stack later in the evening, mostly thanks to the two entries of Charles Chao. However, the German poker pro clashed with Zhang in back-to-back hands which both went the way of the Chinese businessman.
Nitsche managed to recover some of those chips due to the single hand played by Yisha Chen in the last level of the night. Chen sat down to pocket tens and got all of her chips in the middle preflop but ran straight into Nitsche's pocket aces. Chen opted to not reenter the event on Day 1.
The remaining six players will return to the felt at 1 p.m. local time and late registration will remain open until the cards go back in the air. If anyone should choose to buy-in at that time, they will be given a starting stack of 200,000 chips with the blinds resuming at 5,000/10,000 and a 10,000 big blind ante. The blinds will continue to be 45 minutes in length until a winner is crowned which will bring an end to the first stand-alone series on TLPT.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be here to bring you all of the live updates on the final day of the series, so stay tuned to find out who will take home the trophy and the top prize.