April 25 2014, by Jennifer Newell

WPT Championship in the Money, Pahuja Wins WPT POY, New Summer ARIA Event

WPT Championship Bursts Money Bubble

The World Poker Tour was at the Borgata in Atlantic City for its $15,400 buy-in NLHE World Championship event. It started with 328 entries and a $4,852,400 prize pool, but the guarantee was $5 million. The WPT added to the prize pool to put it at $5 million and give the winner $1.35 million.

Day 2 thinned the field from 200 to 68, and WPT Seminole winner Eric Afriat held a massive chip lead over the rest of the players.

The third full day of play saw a number of players eliminated, including Phil Hellmuth and Roland Israelashvili as the money bubble approached. Nick Schulman and Michael Lavoie were then eliminated on the bubble, ensuring that the final 36 players each received at least $30,085.

After the dinner break, some of the eliminations included Athanasios Polychronopoulos, Brian Yoon, Jason Koon, Matt Stout, Loni Harwood, and Jordan Cristos. Play continued with the goal of reaching the final 18.

Mukul Pahuja Wins WPT Player of the Year

During Day 2 of the WPT World Championship that would end Season XII of the tour, Mukul Pahuja locked up the Player of the Year title. Shaun Suller was the only player who could’ve grabbed the title, but he busted from the tournament.

Pahuja didn’t win a WPT title during the season but took second place in Montreal and at the recent Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown, finished fourth at Bay 101 Shooting Star and eighth at the Lucky Hearts Poker Open, and he cashed in the LA Poker Classic.

WPT and PartyPoker Announce ARIA Summer Event

The World Poker Tour announced a live summer tournament entitled “partypoker presents: WPT500 at ARIA Resort & Casino.” The event will be held in the ARIA poker room in Las Vegas from July 1-6, and players can participate in the NLHE tournament for a $565 buy-in. There will be at least a $1 million guarantee for the prize pool, with at least $200K guaranteed for the winner.

Details of the tournament include five starting days, culminating in Day 2 and the final table playing out on July 6. One reentry per day will be allowed, and players can enter on multiple days to move forward to Day 2 with the biggest of their chip stacks. Day 2 will start at 9am with a last-chance $565 turbo heat with 15-minute levels.

Players can qualify from New Jersey and the rest of the world on PartyPoker, and the company expects more online qualifiers than in any other Vegas tournament this summer. ARIA will also live satellites with at least 100 seats to be awarded.

 

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About the author

Jennifer Newell fell in love with poker while working for the World Poker Tour in Los Angeles. She left the company to live as a freelance writer with a heavy concentration on the poker world. It is not often that she travels to poker tournaments and less often that she plays the game, but she can always be found reading and writing about poker. You can find her on her FreelanceWriterJen Facebook page or @WriterJen on Twitter.