Day 1B Concludes with Shawn Nguyen Leading; 524 Players Remain

Day 1B of the Season XVII WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown has come to a conclusion with the 648-entrant field reduced down to approximately 246 players.

Shawn Nguyen (pictured) collected the chip lead as he bagged 319,500 – the only player over 300,000 – to hold the Day 1B chip lead heading into Day 2 on Sunday, April 14.

Nguyen is closely followed by Aman Singh (293,000), Sam Soverel (288,500), Ubaid Habib (276,000), and A.J. Gambino (261,000). Plenty of WPT Champions Club members are still in contention as the likes of Scotty Nguyen, Scott Clements, Andy Frankenberger, Pay Lyons, Keven Stammen, Aaron Mermelstein, Ravi Raghavan, Seth Davies, James Carroll, Erik Seidel, Tony Sinishtaj, James Mackey, Victor Ramdin, Ryan Van Sanford, and Darren Elias all survived. Joining them on Day 2 is current leader in the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race Erkut Yilmaz, WPTDeepStacks Champions Jeff Fielder and Maria Ho, WPT500 Las Vegas Winner Craig Varnell, and ClubWPT Qualifier Kevin Oliveras.

With registration now closed, a total of 1,360-entrants took part in WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown to create a prize pool of $4,352,000. The final 170 players will finish in the money, guaranteed at least $6,185 each, and first-place prize is worth $715,175 along with a seat into the season-ending Baccarat Crystal WPT Tournament of Champions.

Following the 278 survivors from Day 1A, and 246 from Day 1B, there are 524 players returning for Day 2 at 12 p.m. (EDT) on Sunday, April 14.

A full recap of the day, along with a full list of chip counts will be posted later tonight.

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive

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