Loveleen Bachhal Leads 23 Survivors After Day 1a of the 2023 WPT Prime India Main Event

Day 1a chip leader Loveleen Bachhal

The first of three starting days has wrapped for the night with the final 23 players advancing to Day 2 and making the money on the illustrious Deltine Royale, the largest offshore casino just outside of Goa / India. It is the fourth time that the World Poker Tour has been heading to this very destination and Day 1a reeled in a very respectable 181 entries for the 2023 WPT Prime India ₹65,000 (∼$762).

In the previous three editions between 2017 and 2019, it was part of the mid-stakes WPTDeepstacks tour which has since been replaced by the new WPT Prime format in 2022. The very first champion of the new WPT-branded tour was also among the players advancing from Day 1a as well as Zarvan Tumboli finished eighth on the leaderboard with 272,000. Only fellow countryman Loveleen Bachhal claimed more than half a million in chips and holds a solid lead over the other 22 survivors.

The official top 5 chip counts are as follows:

Loveleen Bachhal (India) – 740,000
Romit Advani (India) – 485,000
Madhav Sethi (India) – 338,000
Amol Nimsarkar (India) – 315,000
Aniruddha Joshi (India) – 296,000

Pratibha Arya

Among those to secure a portion of the prize pool is also Adda52 Game Ambassador Pratibha Arya (178,000), and another female player made the cut in Kanchan Sharma (161,000) who already reached the final table in the opening table. Muskan Sethi was not as fortunate, as she was eliminated on the bubble by Madhav Sethi.

All those that bowed out on Day 1a have another two opportunities to take a shot at running up a stack on April 14 and 15, with both remaining flights getting underway at 1pm local time. The WPT.com live reporting team will be back then to provide as much of the action on the tables as possible.