World Poker Tour Super High Roller Day 1: Bonomo Takes Charge

         The World Poker Tour held its first massive $100,000 Super High Roller event at the WPT World Championships. On Wednesday, Day One of this event, 29 players came out strong for the six-figure buy-in. At the end of the first ten levels, Justin Bonomo led the way with 1.837 million in chips. Expectedly, all the players were high rollers and elite players, including, Daniel Cates, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Tom Marchese, Ashton Griffin, Justin Smith, Dan Shak, Tony G, Daniel Negreanu, Erick Lindgren and Erik Seidel. However, Phil Ivey was noticeably absent, leaving many wondering if he’ll be playing in the WSOP in a few weeks time. 

          Phil Galfond was eliminated by Negreanu while Tony G was busted by Vivek Rajkumar. On G’s elimination, he got it all in pre-flop with the second best hand holding AQ. Rajkumar held AK. The board ran out, A8225, which marked the end for Tony G. Rajkumar went on to also eliminate Marchese, but this time he had to do it coming from behind instead of starting with the best hand. Marchese was all-in pre-flop with 1010 and dominating the A10 for Rajkumar. Despite this, the board ran out 9843A, giving Vivek a winning pair of Aces on the river.

            Bonomo doubled fairly early on against Masa Kagawa, helping him work his way to chip leader. Going into the dinner break, Bonomo held the chip lead and never gave it up. In the last level of the night, Bonomo used some aggression to increase his lead in the following hand. Gabe Kaplan raised to 22,000 with the blinds 4,000/8,000 with a 1,000 ante. Bonomo three-bet to 80,000 on the button and John Morgan called from the big blind. Kaplan also called and allowed the flop of  to be seen three ways. Action checked to Bonomo and he bet 120,000. Both of his opponents folded and Bonomo scooped the pot to move to approximately two million in chips at the time.

            A $2.802 million prize pool was created and first place will take home just shy of $1.1 million. The top five places will be paid out. Moving into Day 2, 17 players remain.

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