The first of three starting flights for the $2,500 buy-in Card Player Poker Tour Venetian main event drew 93 entries, with two more starting days still to go.
As is the case with all DeepStack Extravaganza events at Venetian, the players started with plenty of chips. With blinds of 100-100 and 50,000 stacks, there was a whopping 500 big blinds to begin.
It was a little much for Massachusetts native Dan Colpoys… or so he thought. After 14 levels of play and racking up several eliminations, it was he who finished the day on top, sitting with 825,000 to lead the surviving 16 players.
Colpoys, who has $2.8 million in career tournament earnings and several high roller final tables this year alone, will start day 2 with a very healthy 165 big blinds.
Honestly- What the fuck is this structure? Who wants this? 50k at 100/100 good god.
— The Vegas Pig (@DColpoys23) November 17, 2022
Joining him at the top of the leaderboard is Andrew Moreno, a poker pro who has won at Venetian before. Moreno picked up $242,293 with a victory at the DeepStack Extravaganza series earlier this year.
Another familiar face with chips is Chance Kornuth, who has been on a tear for the last two years. The high-stakes pro, who sits just outside the top 10 in the Player of the Year race, won the MSPT Venetian event in the summer of 2021 for $412,086.
Kornuth won a big flip with A-K against pocket queens on the very last hand of the night to surge up the rankings. He’ll have a good chance to add to his $12.3 million in career earnings when he returns for day 2 action.
WPT champion James Romero and two-time WSOP bracelet winner Michael Wang round out the top five. Other notables still in the hunt include Darren Rabinowitz, Anthony Hu, Joe Kuether, Shannon Shorr, and the “Kings of the Venetian” Ben Palmer and Eric Baldwin. (Palmer has the most cashes at the venue, while Baldwin has the most in earnings.)
The second starting flight kicks off at 11 a.m. Friday. Day 1C will be at the same time Saturday. Everyone who makes it through will combine on Sunday at noon to play down to the final table.
| Name | Chips |
| Daniel Colpoys | 825,000 |
| Andrew Moreno | 747,000 |
| Chance Kornuth | 576,000 |
| James Romero | 440,000 |
| Michael Wang | 362,000 |
| Rodger Johnson | 347,000 |
| Kenny Huynh | 272,000 |
| John Dennehey | 267,000 |
| Matthew Hunt | 245,000 |
| Benjamin Palmer | 187,000 |
| Shannon Shorr | 92,000 |
| Joseph Kuether | 83,000 |
| Eric Baldwin | 74,000 |
| Darren Rabinowitz | 68,000 |
| Matthew Volosevich | 65,000 |
| Anthony Hu | 54,000 |
