Day 1B of the ongoing WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Championship repeated the success of the first starting flight of the $3,500 buy-in tournament. A total of 464 entries joined the event on Day 1A on Friday, and 447 more entered it on Day 1B, played on Saturday at the host venue Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

Joseph Couden emerged the overnight chip leader after the ten levels scheduled for the day were played. The player will actually return for Day 2 of the tournament as the one to lead all survivors from the two starting flights with his stack of 342,500 in chips.

Couden has live tournament earnings of over $1.3 million. However, he has not won a WPT event so far. He scored his best result in the series during its eleventh season, when he finished seventh in the WPT Parx Open Poker Classic, good for a payout of $47,215.

If the player maintains his Day 1B momentum, he could well become this year’s Lucky Hearts Poker Open champion. Couden generally prefers playing cash game poker to tournaments. He even opted for a Day 1B entry in the $3,500 Championship at Seminole Hard Rock Casino because he was playing cash games on Friday at the time when the Day 1A starting flight was played.

Couden doubled up shortly after the beginning of his participation in the event, and that helped him quite a lot in building his momentum and his stack. The player is leading a field of 343 survivors from Days 1A and 1B.

With Days 1A and 1B now being complete, it can be said that the 2018 edition of the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open attracted a massive field of 911 entries. They generated an overall prize pool of $2,915,200, or well beyond the guaranteed prize pool of $2 million.

The top 114 finishers will receive a share of the money with min-cashes starting from $5,858. However, all remaining participants will surely go for the first-place prize of $511,604 and the tournament trophy. The champion will also receive an automatic entry into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions.

Day 2 action is set to resume today at noon local time. Organizers believe that the money bubble will burst at some point throughout the day.

Joining Couden at the tables of Seminole Hard Rock Casino, we will see Cong Pham, Bobby Suer, and Sam DeSilva from Day 1B, and former WPT Main Tour Main Event champs Darren Elias, who is vying for a record title number four, Matas Cimbolas, and Stefan Schillhabel from Day 1A. Schillhabel won the $50,000 buy-in Lucky Hearts Poker Open Super High Roller mere days ago, and will certainly be keen to lock another major title from the festival.

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