Vilchez Takes Staggeringly Large Stack into Day 2
Day 1a has ended at Mid-States Poker Tour Poker Bowl V at Venetian, and one player shined far brighter than all the rest during the 15 levels of play.
Jesse Vilchez turned a 25,000 starting stack into 1,157,000, a staggering total gives him more than 10% of the chips in play thus far. It's easily more than double the number bagged by second-place Amy Patel, who finished with 486,000.
Hailing from Michigan, Vilchez has made a habit of late cashing MSPT events at Venetian. He finished third in November in the $1K event for $91,502, then he got 77th in the $1,600 for $4,961. Overall, he's got $757K in live cashes.
Today, he simply victimized Phil Gioia in two massive spots. First, he doubled up with top pair of queens when Gioia couldn't get away from pocket tens and a live gutter on the turn. That gave Vilchez a huge stack of more than 100 big blinds, but so large was Gioia's own stack that he remained the tournament leader.
No matter, as the next pot would shift all of the chips to Vilchez. He three-bet in late position against Gioia's open then was happy to call off his entire stack with pocket aces. Gioia had eights and didn't improve, sending nearly all of his chips over and leaving Vilchez the overwhelming leader.
Overall, about 45 players advanced out of 412 entries, which enabled the tournament to breeze past the $350K guarantee by building a prize pool of almost $400K on the first starting flight alone.
Some others who made it through included MSPT stalwart Rich Alsup, former WSOP Main Event champ Ryan Riess and Blake Whittington, who has already booked two wins in side events this series.
Among those running dry on chips were Jordan Cristos, Pat Lyons, Mike Shin, Katie Lindsay and James Carroll, coming off a six-figure score here in the last MSPT on site just a month ago.
They'll all have another chance on Day 1b, which is set for 11 a.m. on Friday.