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October 26th 2006
WPT North American Poker Championship kicks off over Niagara Falls
Last week saw the Festa al Lago tournament, the newest addition to the World Poker Tour, take place from the familiar surroundings of the Bellagio’s poker room in Las Vegas. Though impressive, it has to be said that the Bellagio pales in comparison to spectacular location of the latest stop on the World Poker Tour: Fallsview, overlooking the Niagara Falls.
The North American Poker Championship (NAPC), yet another new event on the WPT and the first ever WPT event to take place in Canada, kicked off yesterday after attracting a staggering 540 players, more than any of the last three WPT events. So much for the anti-gambling bill crushing poker!
The buy-in is the usual $10,000 but the event structure is different from all other WPT tournaments. Like the Festa al Lago the NAPC is a deepstack tournament meaning players start with $20,000 chips instead of $10,000. But the NAPC goes one further, starting the blinds at 25/25 instead of the 50/100 level more commonly found in deepstack tournaments. This meant patience was a key factor in success, especially since iPods and other such equipment were banned from the tables.
As it turned out some players found the pace to slow to cope with (Internet specialists we wonder) and on some tables players were resorting to some bizarre ‘strategic’ plays. For example at table 28 a number of players began raising and calling blind, with one player even moving all-in four times at the beginning of each new level. Eventually with just $7000 chips left he was called by Ah-Td. He made a full house with his 7d-2h to double up and cripple his opponent!
A number of famous professionals turned out for the competition, with Canadian stars Gavin Smith, Daniel Negreanu and Isabelle Mercier all flying the national colours. Negreanu, one of the most popular poker players around, wrote in his blog that the tournament was exceptionally well organised, sounding relieved that his country was doing poker proud.
Day One was split into two days, the first one of which finished yesterday and saw John Juanda, one of the most successful players in WPT history, take the lead with over $200,000 in chips. In second place, but some way back with $138,000, is the Canadian Steve Paul-Ambrose, winner of the WPT PokerStars’ Caribbean Poker Adventure in January this year. Of the other big names John D’Agostino, and Liz Lieu each have over $70,000 in chips, while Alan Goehring, Eli Elezra, Dan Harrington, Isabelle Mercier, Amnon Filippi, Victor Ramdin, and Barry Greenstein are alive, though in the case of most of them, only just!
Day One B begins tomorrow at 12pm EST.
Submitted: 26/10/2006 11:38:55
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