Roman Shainiuk, Paul Chai Bag Big on Day 1b of the WSOPC Thunder Valley Main Event
The second of two opening flights is complete in the World Series of Poker Circuit Thunder Valley $1,700 Main Event. Day 1b drew 273 total entrants, with 68 surviving to come back for Day 2. Those 68 players will join the 31 survivors of the Day 1a flight, and the combined field of 99 will return for a noon restart on Sunday.
Plenty of big names came through the Thunder Valley Poker Room in Lincoln, California, to take a shot at advancing in the tournament. At the end of the night, it was Roman Shainiuk bagging the biggest stack with 421,500 chips.
Closely following on the chip leaderboard are Paul Chai (408,000), Kelly Minkin (293,000), Ian Chan (280,500), and Dinh Le (278,000).
Notable players also bagging Day 1b included Brett Murray (200,500), Jimmy Zeledon (118,000), Pat Lyons (56,000), David Brookshire (50,500) and Rickey Evans (116,000).
The Thunder Valley Poker Room was filled with some of poker’s best tournament players Saturday, and some of the notable players who failed to make it through to Day 2 included Ian Steinman, Craig Varnell, Jarod Minghini, JC Tran, Joe Elpayaa, Josh Prager, Scott Sanders and Kenny Tran.
The 273 Day 1b entrants brought the total number of entries for the Main Event to 414. The total prize pool is $627,210, with $130,667 going to the eventual winner. The tournament will pay 63 places, and with 99 totals players coming back for Day 2, the money bubble should burst fairly quickly on Sunday.
Play will resume at Level 16, with the blinds at 2000/4000 and a 4,000 big blind ante. The tournament is scheduled to play down to the final nine Sunday, with those nine coming back for the final table Monday.
Follow along with the PokerNews live reporting team as the WSOP Circuit Thunder Valley Main Event continues.
flop, and her opponent on the button went all in over the top. Minkin made the call.
and river 
clinched the win for Minking, who's now over the 300k mark.
. Prager asked if he had ace-king and Winters said he did not as he sent his hand face up onto the felt. 
to leave him with the second-best hand, thereby eliminating him from the tournament.
dashed what little chances he had at cracking Zeledon's aces and the river 
made the hand official, bringing Zeledon north of six figures along the way.
and both the big blind and Minkin checked. Shojaeyan bet 7,500, receiving two folds before action was back on Minkin. She made the call, bringing the turn 
. Both players checked.
flop, Hugenberg bet 11,000, and his opponent rerasied all in. Hugenberg snap called.
and Minghini checked. The under-the-gun player checked behind, bringing the river 
on the river. Tolon checked, and Sparks went all in for her last 10,600. The bet sent Tolon deep into the tank, but he eventually made the call.