Hoang Pham Claims Runaway Chip Lead Ahead of Day 2

As had been expected, the final starting flight of the €3,300 WPT Germany Main Event drew the largest turnout with 175 entries to the Day 1c. The eight levels saw 77 players advance to the next day, returning to battle for the €1,500,000 guaranteed prize pool. Those who haven’t made it-or haven’t arrived yet-will still have a chance to join the field on Friday, February 21 with the late registration open for four more levels.

Hoang Pham has been the most prolific player in the tournament. He reported a stack of 368,800 tonight, putting his name miles ahead of the rest of the field. Pham got the ball rolling, building a decent stack before he tangled with Antoine Vranken in the late stages of the day.

Vranken, who had been on the radar for the majority of the day, had a solid claim for the pole position himself, but a nasty cooler saw him lose the largest pot of the tournament so far with more than 300,000 in the middle. Vranken got dealt kings in the small blind, Pham peeled aces in the big, and the inevitable clash escalated on the flop.

Pham, who hails from Kasse, Germany, rarely competes in tournaments as he claimed to prefer cash games. While he plays poker only recreationally, he has a ton of experience as he’s been involved in the game for about 16 years.

Should Pham keep it up and go for the glory here at King’s Resort, he would need to utilize all his skills to prevail in the stacked contest. Some of the world’s elite players took to the felt including WPT champion and member of the Poker Triple Crown club Bertrand Grospellier (67,800).

The Frenchman was joined by fellow winners from the WPT circuit: WPT Vienna 2014-2015 champ Konstantinos Nanos (88,900), WPTDeepStacks Malta 2018-2019 winner Sandro Pitzanti (63,000), and WPT Russia 2019-2020 winner Aleksey Badulin (49,400) all navigated through to Day 2.

Those who survived Day 1c with stacks well above the average line included Sascha Minerva (257,200), Artan Dedusha (234,800), Anh Do (223,000), Siamak Tooran (220,800), Vitalii Kavkoliuk (211,300), Besim Hot (190,800), and Mykola Kostyrko (167,500).

Day 2 starts at 12 p.m. local time with all players aiming to make it to the money, which will be the ultimate task for tomorrow’s stretch which will culminate on the bubble. Come back for more live updates at noon as the coverage from WPT Germany continues.