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Alex Aqel leads Day 2 of 2019 WPT Borgata Championship

One of world’s most famous casinos is undoubtedly the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The location is currently hosting the prestigious WPT Borgata Poker Open which began on 15^th January will run till 1^st February. The Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth made his first title win of 2019 too.

The main attraction of the series is the $3,500 WPT Borgata Championship and the first two starting flights are already in the books. A total of 1,204 entries were reached (421 from Day 1A and 783 from Day 1B) and the record turnout of 1,313 set in 2011 WPT Borgata was surpassed by a good margin, bringing it to 1,415 entries in total (211 in late registration).

We reported yesterday that Indian PokerStars Team Pro Aditya Agarwal was in the run, having signed up for it in Day 1B. Unfortunately, he busted on Day 2 before the money bubble burst. After hours of action-packed poker, the field whittled down 177 players, busting Chris Tryba on the bubble at 178^th. Tryba shoved his remaining 141k with pocket Nines and received a call from Dylan Gang, who had As Kh. The board gave an Ace-pair for Gang and was enough to put Tryba to the rail as the bubble boy.

The chip leader on Day 2 with 1,260,000 chips is Alex Aqel. It took 15 hands to cross the bubble and the play stopped at the field count of 177. All of them are guaranteed the minimum amount of $6,024, with the colossal $728,430 1^st place cash prize. Day 1B’s chip leader Joey Couden is at 25^th place with 535,000 chips.

Coming to the chip leader Aqel, he is among the two who’ve passed the million mark, the other being Chase Bianchi with 1.23 million chips at 2^nd. Aqel hails from US and has recorded tournament cashes from his home country only. He made his biggest cash prize of $208,184 for winning 2017 WSOP Circuit Milwaukee Main Event. The player will surely look to give a tough fight and maintain his good lead for the rest of the tournament.

Some of the notable names to survive the day include Brian Altman (668k chips), Phil Hellmuth (519k chips), Victor Ramdin (115k chips), Eric Siegel (99k chips) and 2015 WSOP ME Champion Joe McKeehen (76k chips). WPTDeepstacks Champion Upeshka De Silva and PCA $25k HR winner Martin Zamani got busted and are out of the race.

Top 10 Chip Counts –

1. Alex Aqel – 1,260,000
2. Chase Bianchi – 1,230,000
3. Nick Schwarmann – 919,000
4. A.J. Kelsall – 895,000
5. Dylan Gang – 872,000
6. Brian O’Donoghue – 856,000
7. Zach Donovan – 843,000
8. Ping Liu – 837,000
9. Dave Peay – 830,000
10. Rafael Oliveira – 770,000

Keep reading GutshotMagazine.com for more tournament updates, results from around the world and for general poker news.

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