Phil Boyd Leads Gateway Poker Classic as Day 1c Opens
The Missouri player enters Day 1c with 1.08 million chips after topping the Day 1b leaderboard and busting the bubble.
Phil Boyd carried the lead into Day 1c of the RunGood Poker Series Gateway Poker Classic $800 Main Event, with 1,082,000 chips and the only seven-figure stack among the players who had already secured their tickets for Day 2. The event had reached 284 entries through the first two starting flights, and the field was expected to grow significantly once Day 1c got underway at Hollywood Casino & Hotel.
That position was familiar for Boyd. PokerNews reported that he was also the Day 1b leader, when he became the first player to clear the million-chip mark and finished with 1,082,000 after busting Robert Weeks on the money bubble. Day 1b added 179 entries, pushing the running total to 284 and leaving 22 survivors from that flight.
Going into Day 1c, 35 players had secured Day 2 seats. Mike Bell was in the mix with 693,000, followed by Travis Gillihan with 644,000, Stephen Martines with 615,000 and Cameron Dugan with 611,000.
Keith Heine had 453,000. The list also included Jeffrey Copeland with 260,000, and Heine was noted as the player who won the RGPS stop in St. Louis in 2023.
Day 1c began with 40,000-chip starting stacks. Levels were 30 minutes long, late registration stayed open through the end of Level 8, and unlimited reentries were available.
Each Day 1 flight ended once 12.5% of the field remained. A Day 1d flight was set for 5 p.m. that evening.
The wider series runs Aug. 4-9 and the Main Event carries a $200,000 guarantee. All survivors from the four starting flights are scheduled to come back for Day 2 at noon, when levels stretch to 40 minutes and the tournament is set to play down to a winner.
The same Hollywood Casino venue hosted an RGPS stop in March, when Gabriel Attoun won the $800 Main Event from a field of 647 entries for $83,141.
