Michael Smith Tops Winter Super Stack Main Event Day 1b

The Winter Super Stack Main Event is well underway now with the conclusion of Day 1b. The $1,500 tournament is the marquee event of Deerfoot Inn & Casino’s 12-day, 13-tournament series in Calgary, and it carries the largest prize pool guarantee the Super Stack has ever had — $250,000.

As the city closed the shutters for the incoming snow storm, players poured through registration to take a shot in the second of three starting flights in the Main Event. By the time registration closed, 109 entries had been tallied. When added to the 41 from Day 1a, the total is at 150 and almost already at the $250,000 guarantee.

The players battled through 12 one-hour levels before play paused for the night with 24 players still holding chips. Leading the pack was Michael Smith with 289,000 followed by Gurdeep Dhillon with 286,500. Vanessa Kade rounded out the top three with 273,200. The rest of the field was filled with some great talent from across Canada’s western provinces.

2017 Winter Super Stack Main Event Day 1b Chip Counts

Player	Chips	Player	Chips
Michael Smith	289,000	Sam Ngai	113,000
Gurdeep Dhillon	286,500	Laurence Louie	98,600
Vanessa Kade	273,200	Albert Kenny	88,000
Kris Klimosko	254,500	Chris Hak	83,500
Rob Dore	204,000	Ryan Comely	76,500
Mike Robinson	199,000	Richard Mullen	74,800
Paul Sokoloff	192,000	Todd Funk	73,000
Josh Wallace	174,500	Eric Wasylenko	64,700
Nathan Ewert	153,600	Ron Giles	62,500
Minh Thai	153,000	Andy Truong	41,500
Ron Lauzon	137,500	Ryan Smith	36,300
Tyler Bonkowski	129,900	Merv Giles	18,300

Some of the other players to buy in to Day 1b but fail to survive 12 levels included Ryan Hodge, Thomas Taylor, Jared Klimosko, Malcolm Bolger, Bo Fric, Devin Verstraelen, Jonathan Sanborn, and Trevor Norlander.

On Monday, the 24 survivors will join the six from Day 1a as well as however many make it through Day 1c. The third flight begins on Sunday at noon at Deerfoot Inn & Casino and PokerNews Canada will be on the tournament floor live-reporting all of the action.

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