Another 36 Survive PNPC Main Event Day 1b with JR Javier Leading

The final day of the 2015 PlayNow Poker Championship in B.C. has been set after Day 1b of $1,650 Main Event came to a close on Saturday night at Hard Rock Casino Vancouver.

Demonstrating Vancouver’s thirst for premier poker tournaments, the event sold out all 100 seats for both starting days. And after 12 45-minute blind levels, both days finishing with 36 players remaining, so 72 will return for Day 2 on Sunday for the conclusion of the 11-day series.

Day 1b began at 11 a.m. and concluded at about 9 p.m. The player counting and bagging the most chips was a local regular, JR Javier. He finished the day with 215,100, but he’ll come to Day 2 with the third-best stack, as the massive chip leads of Kayvan Payman (356,600) and Woody Nielsen (290,500) from Day 1a still hold the top spots.

Javier spends a lot of time in the cash games in this room, but he also final-tabled two of the events in Hard Rock Casino Vancouver Poker Championships earlier this year. However, even a min-cash ($4,410) in this Main Event would be his best ever, and nearly double his tracked tournament earnings.

The organizers crunched some numbers yesterday to come up with the payout schedule. With the 200 entries, the prize pool sits at $294,000 and first place will earn a whopping $85,260!

2015 PNPC $1,650 Main Event Day 1b Top 10 Counts

Player	Chips
JR Javier	215,100
Phu Chieng	161,800
Adam Young	153,500
Marshall Virtue	152,600
Jack Li	147,000
Joseph Liang	136,900
Kaveh Payman	131,100
Jun Kang	129,600
Jacob Wideman	124,300
Kalbinder Kooner	114,500

Some of the other players to survive Day 1b include the very accomplished Ami Barer (43,500) as well as Jason Mann (49,400) who had better luck on his second bullet after busting Day 1a.

For more details about Day 1b, you can head to our live reporting page to read through the big hands, follow the progression of chip counts, and browse the photo gallery.

PokerNews Canada will be back on the tournament floor for one last day tomorrow to post live updates of the action as this event goes from 72 players down to a PlayNow Poker Champion. Follow along right here.

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