Ryan Remington Leads 151 Players on Day 1A of WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open

By Tim Duckworth

The second stop of 2020 for Season XVIII is the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open from the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. With a $2 million guaranteed prize pool, and two starting flights, Day 1A attracted a total of 423 entrants and saw just 151 players survive into Day 2 on Sunday.

Following ten levels of play, it would be Ryan Remington (pictured) topping the leaderboard to finish the day with 475,000 in chips – nearly 108 big blinds more then his nearest rival.

“The day went well for me,” Remington said. “I was playing it slow, played my game, and in the big hand, I just decided to go for it and got quad jacks on the river.”

From Gillette, Wyoming, Remington has amassed over $206,000 in lifetime tournament earning with the majority of those coming in 2019. Remington’s biggest result is his second-place finish at WPTDeepStacks Black Hawk in May, 2019, where he pocketed $54,305 after losing out heads-up to Faraz Jaka. Since then, Remington has added cashes at the Season XVII WPT Choctaw (televised) and Season XVIII WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic to see his WPT earnings eclipse the $89,000-mark.

Here on vacation with his wife and kids, Remington’s ascent into the chip lead occurred courtesy of a three-way pot involving Michael Newman and Ping Liu. On the turn, both Newman and Liu had turned a straight against Remington’s top set, and with both Newman and Remington both at-risk, the river saw a repeat jack to ensure Remington of a virtual triple after rivering quad jacks.

“I’ll just play my game I guess,” Remington said on his plan heading into Day 2 with the chip lead. “You won’t know until you get to the table and see what cards you get.”

Sitting on the heels of Remington is Alan Schein (344,500), Vladimir Vasilyev (323,500), and Davian Santana (307,500). Schein climbed up the leaderboard early in the day after eliminating Ryan D’Angelo and Cord Garcia, while both Vasilyev and Santana soared up the leaderboard in the final levels of play.

Rounding out the top counts include Stanley Lee (260,500), Joey Couden (257,000), Robert Mizrachi (251,000), Tzu Huang (250,000), and WPT Champions Club member Brian Altman (243,500).

Joining Altman (pictured) as WPT Champions Club members to survive into Day 2 are Jonathan Jaffe, Jared Jaffee, Matthew Waxman, Patrick Serda, Jason Brin, Darren Elias, Donald Maloney, Sam Panzica, Chanracy Khun, Noah Schwartz, Anthony Zinno, and defending champion Darryll Fish.

Registration is open until the beginning of level 9 on Day 1B (approximately 9:15 p.m. ET) and players are allowed unlimited re-entries. Players that have bagged on Day 1A have the option to play Day 1B, but will forced to sacrifice their Day 1A chip stack.

To view complete information on the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open structure and schedule, click here.

Day 1B of the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open begins at 11 a.m. (ET) on Saturday, January 18, with continuous live updates being provided by the World Poker Tour. Stay tuned right here to WPT.com for the exclusive live coverage of the tournament from start to finish to see who becomes the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open, and wins his or her way to the season-ending Baccarat Crystal WPT Tournament of Champions.

Photography by Melissa Haereiti / PokerPhotoArchive

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