The 169 players who qualified to return today from the 4 starting flights in the $100,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em tourney in the TonyBet Power Weekend are taking their seats, unbagging their chips and mentally preparing themselves for what will be – for some – a long day of great poker action.
For others the day will be shorter – typically in events like this, the eliminations to start Day 2 come at a blistering pace as short stacked players try to double up to make a run for the money. That being said, there are only 8 players in this tournament who will start Day 2 with fewer than 10 big blinds in their stack, which is a relatively low total, so there are fewer players than usual who might be considered to be in the “danger zone”.
Time will tell how things play out. Regardless, as the number of players ticks down the tournament will get closer and closer to the money bubble, which will be reached when the player in 91st place is eliminated. The remaining 90 players will all be in the money. So once the initial frenzy concludes, the bubble watch is the next major threshold in the tournament.
The leaders today have managed to build up truly monster stacks through the 14 levels played so far. There are 14 players who start today with over 200K in tournament chips – so each of these players is playing over 67 big blinds. And the chip average is just about 35 big blinds, indicating that there is a lot of play to be had in the tourney.
Nothing left now but the famous command to shuffle up and deal, which should arrive momentarily…
Chip Leader Dario Musto
Dario Musto
