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Registration has closed in the $5,000 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) bestbet Scramble Championship with 361 entries, 205 of which bought into the tournament for Day 1b on Saturday.
The final Main Tour event before the WPT World Championship in Las Vegas next month is now ready for Day 2, which will take place at noon ET on Sunday from the bestbet Jacksonville poker room.
The eventual winner will take home $347,850, the largest share of the $1,642,550 prize pool.
Josh Reichard, a WPT Champions Club member, will have a sizable chip advantage over the 124 remaining players when the cards are in the air. Reichard finished Day 1a with the chip lead, while Jacksonville local poker player Thad McNulty ended the second starting flight with the biggest stack.
Competitive at the Top
Reichard finished Day 1a with 487,000 chips (195 big blinds), a massive advantage over the other 55 players who bagged from that session. But the leaderboard on Saturday was far more competitive, and no one from the second session, including McNulty, came close to matching Reichard’s stack.
Top 5 Day 1b Chip Stacks
| Place | Player | Chip Stack |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thad McNulty | 369,500 |
| 2 | Jeremiah Wheeler | 360,000 |
| 3 | David DiBernardi | 335,500 |
| 4 | Joe Jordan | 331,000 |
| 5 | Fred Paradis | 329,000 |
McNulty ended the day with 369,500 chips, good for 148 big blinds when Day 2 begins. That stack is only a few big blinds better than what Jeremiah Wheeler bagged (360,000). Right behind those two players is David DiBernardi (335,500), Joe Jordan (331,000), and Fred Paradis (329,000).
McNulty is no slouch on the felt and has some impressive results, which includes a fourth place finish for over $150,000 in a 2014 World Series of Poker (WSOP) event and more than $660,000 in lifetime live tournament cashes, according to The Hendon Mob.
The chip leader battled against some top pros on Day 1b, and will do the same on Day 2. Former WPT Player of the Year winner Erkut Yilmaz (206,000) and three-time WPT champion Eric Afriat (121,000) were among those who bagged chips on Saturday. Afriat has a chance to tie Darren Elias‘ record of four World Poker Tour titles. The full list of chip counts weren’t available at the time of publishing.
ClubWPT qualifiers Michael Goldsworthy and Raymond Harper both battled on Day 1b but were unable to find a bag. Harper was competing in his first ever live poker tournament. Jeremy Becker, who busted on Day 1a, came back strong on Saturday and finished the day with an average stack. The money bubble will burst when the field reaches 46 players, likely to be sometime in the evening on Sunday.
Josh Reichard Leads WPT bestbet Scramble After Day 1a
*Images courtesy of Katerina Lukina/World Poker Tour.