Rzentkowski Leads Day 1a with 407,000

Lee Rzentkowski leads the 26 players advancing from Day 1a of the Mid-States Poker Tour Ho-Chunk Gaming Wisconsin Dells, the second-to-last stop of the tour's sixth season. Rzentkowski was the big stack for the latter half of the day and didn't seem to win any real bigs hands, he just steadily climbed the counts. On one hand, a player bet 17,500 on the river and Rzentkowski called with a straight. He added those chips to his stack, and despite a few setbacks, managed to top out at 407,000.

World Series of Poker bracelet winner John Reading and Andrew Rubinberg, who finished runner-up in the MSPT Ho-Chunk back in 2014, were two of the big movers on Day 1a. Reading held stead at around 70,000 until a massive pot in the last level against Jeff Fielder. Fielder shoved all in, putting Reading at risk. Reading called and doubled up with top pair against a bluff by Fielder. Reading finished the day with 238,500 and in fifth position.

Rubinberg was down to about 11,000 before he got aces all in against ace-king and doubled up. Since that hand, he was on a tear and moved all the way up to second on the day. During the last few hands he hit a set of fours on the turn and won another 90,000 to place him firmly in second place. Greg Seif (259,500) and James Casement (267,000) round out the top five.

Below is a list of the end of day chip counts.

Day 1b will start tomorrow at 4 p.m. local time and the surviving players will join these 26 on Sunday. Day 2 will begin at 11 a.m. on Sunday and play down to a winner.

Player	Chips	Progress
Lee Rzentkowski	407,000 137,000	137,000
Andrew Rubinberg	282,500 77,500	77,500
James Casement	267,000 267,000	267,000
Greg Seif	259,500 80,500	80,500
John Reading	238,500 3,500	3,500

Jacob Woggon	207,000 207,000	207,000
Paul Elfelt	158,500 158,500	158,500
Ken Garbowicz	153,500 8,500	8,500
Corey Schmidt	147,500 147,500	147,500
Albert Kant	134,000 134,000	134,000
Nicola Ditrapani	132,000 7,000	7,000
Jeffery Behling	128,000 128,000	128,000
Richard Alsup	117,000 79,400	79,400
Shane Thorne	114,500 114,500	114,500
Marius Toderici	111,500 111,500	111,500
Gerald Heckathorn	93,000 8,000	8,000
Mark Gabardi	87,500 27,500	27,500
Jeff Jelinek	84,000 100,000	100,000
Joseph Miller	80,000 80,000	80,000
Edward Ibarra	74,500 74,500	74,500
Jeff Fielder	64,500 20,800	20,800
Zac Zastava	61,000 19,000	19,000
Terry Ring	52,500 19,500	19,500
David Sutton	40,500 6,600	6,600
Sam Overlien	15,000 60,000	60,000
Ernest Garrett	14,500 32,500	32,500

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