Phachara "Phachara W" Wongwichit Second in Chips in The Big 500
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It was a huge day for Event #14: $500 THE BIG 500 in the 2021 GGPoker WSOP Online, with 2,639 entries creating a prize pool of $1,253,525. Out of all those entries, 35 players made it through 32 levels of play and Rafael "riskgambler" Furlanetto bagged the chip lead with 4,354,138 in chips.
The Brazilian is followed by a familiar name and face; Phachara Wongwichit first doubled up through Tomi "BAAABUUSKIIII" Brouk and scored another big pot when he took out Makoto "akayagi44" Yoshimichi and earned a full double thanks to Renan Bruschi to end the day with 4,400,296. Wongwichit's best finish in a WSOP event was in 2017 when he finished in fourth place in Event #43: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em SHOOTOUT for $84,453.
Completing the top five for Day 1 are Ivan "uPayMyOnix" Limeira (4,354,138), Yossi "Unagiman" Vaknin (3,731,835), and Nick Maimone (3,649,332). But definitely keep an eye on notable players like Rayan "InhalemyQuQ" Chamas, Arthur Conan, Brouk, Bruschi, and Chun Lei "judd trump" Zhou who frequents the higher buy-in tournaments a lot.
Event #14: $500 THE BIG 500 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rafael "riskgambler" Furlanetto | Brazil | 5,572,091 | 80 |
| 2 | Phachara "Phachara W" Wongwichit | Thailand | 4,400,296 | 63 |
| 3 | Ivan "uPayMyOnix" Limeira | Brazil | 4,354,138 | 62 |
| 4 | Yossi "Unagiman" Vaknin | Israel | 3,731,835 | 53 |
| 5 | Nick Maimone | United States | 3,649,332 | 52 |
| 6 | Rafael "TheBigKid" Moraes | Brazil | 3,594,897 | 51 |
| 7 | Alexander "Mucurinha" Debus | Germany | 3,253,516 | 46 |
| 8 | Ricardo "OverTh1nking" Caprichoso | Portugal | 2,576,780 | 37 |
| 9 | Rayan "InhalemyQuQ" Chamas | Canada | 2,386,185 | 34 |
| 10 | Arthur Conan | France | 2,341,986 | 33 |
They started paying out prizes at 431st place, and it took less than two hours to get there once registration closed. Sebastian "Weizen" Gaehl bubbled the tournament but got his buy-in back due to the Early Bird feature which gives players protection during the bubble.
A slew of poker players then hit the rail like Davidi Kitai, Juha Helppi, Ottomar Ladva, James Chen, Felipe Ketzer, Anton Morgenstern, Wiktor Malinowski, GGPoker TwitchSquad member Patrick "Egption" Tardif, Yuri Dzivielevski, George Wolff, Andrey Pateychuk, Konstantin Maslak, and Niklas Astedt for example.
Friend of GG Jessica Teusl managed to get through to Day 2, though she'll be on a smaller stack of just under 1 million chips. Other GGPoker notables like Felipe Ramos, Daniel Negreanu, and Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier all tried but failed to make the money today.
Play will resume on Level 33 which features a small blind of 35,000, a big blind of 70,000, and a running ante of 8,500. The level duration will remain at 15 minutes until the final table has been reached. Once the nine remaining players have selected their seats at the final table, the blinds will go up each time 20 hands have been played.
Cards go in the air for Day 2 of Event #14: $500 THE BIG 500 at 1:01 p.m. ET on August 20, and PokerNews will be there with all the action as yet another bracelet is awarded on GGPoker.