Day 1A Ends with 104 Players; Brandon Lai Leads with 204K

There were 209 entries here on Day 1A, and after eight one-hour levels, the field is down to 104 players bagging up for Day 2. The chipleader appears to be Brandon Lai (pictured) with 204,200, followed closely by Ari Engel, who finished with 201,700. The full list of official chip counts is at the bottom of this post.

The Gardens Casino is contributing an incredible $250,000 in cash and prizes to this event, with a straight $200,000 in cash added to the prizepool, plus a Mercedes-Benz SLC Roadster that will be awarded to the winner.

Day 1B begins tomorrow (Sunday) at 12:00 noon PDT, and players are allowed two entries per starting flight, plus two more entries on Day 2 for a maximum of six entries per player. Day 2 begins Monday at 12:00 noon, with registration open until the start of Level 11 (about 3:30 pm).

Stay tuned to WPT.com for continuing coverage of the WPT Gardens Poker Festival main event. Here are the official chip counts for the 104 players who survived Day 1A:

Brandon Lai – 204,200
Ari Engel – 201,700
Jesse Vilchez – 178,100
Brandon Zuidema – 177,000
Shaun Davis – 176,200
Jake Schindler – 164,800
Kitty Kuo – 163,000
Satoshi Ikeda – 146,800
David Pham – 143,800
Eli Strickland – 142,800
Tan Nguyen – 139,000
Jonathan Khalifa – 135,500
Caleb Furth – 134,300
David Brookshire – 131,500
Saya Ono – 126,900
Cord Garcia – 125,900
Jared Jaffee – 124,100
Mike Del Vecchio – 122,900
Dylan Wilkerson – 114,300
Richard Ponterio – 113,900
Adam Levy – 111,800
Hakob Gabrielyan – 108,800
Allan Le – 105,500
Athanasios Polychronopoulos – 103,900
Joe Serock – 101,600
Kevin MacPhee – 96,600
Yong Wang – 96,600
Peter Neff – 95,500
Kalyan Cheekuri – 94,300
Sam Panzica – 91,200
Anthony Desai – 90,800
Ryan Lenaghan – 90,200
Tuan Phan – 90,000
Sandeep Pulusani – 89,300
Daniel Strelitz – 88,200
Frank Linares – 87,600
Marvin Rettenmaier – 86,500
Ryan Hemmel – 86,100
Rick Alvarado – 85,500
Owen Crowe – 85,000
Eric Hicks – 83,700
Victor Crisostomo – 81,800
Jonathan Dahlberg – 80,800
Ronald Allen – 80,800
Christopher Usude – 80,500
Joseph Beasy – 79,700
Vuong Do – 77,200
Marc MacDonnell – 75,500
Shane Martin – 75,300
Jinhao Han – 74,900
Mike Shariati – 73,700
Joseph Cheong – 73,400
Richard Sciuto – 73,000
John Rock – 72,600
Zu Zhou – 71,100
James Rann – 70,500
Lauren Roberts – 68,600
Karim Rebei – 67,500
Maria Ho – 66,500
John Misirian – 65,500
Thomas Zanot – 64,500
Michael Ung – 63,700
Mohsin Charania – 62,700
Art Papazyan – 62,500
Aaron Massey – 62,400
Michael Wasserman – 62,200
Ping Liu – 62,100
Jeannette Mendez – 59,100
Hal Strumpf – 57,000
Nam Le – 56,400
Shawn Busse – 56,200
Evan Jarvis – 56,000
John Villanueva – 55,200
Shahin Edalatdju – 54,300
Yeow Chung Chong – 52,100
Aram Oganyan – 51,300
Tom Braband – 51,000
Sorel Mizzi – 50,600
Ozgur Arda – 49,800
David Malka – 48,000
Cody Bell – 47,100
Eric Vallee – 47,000
Calvin Anderson – 46,000
Ryan Murphy – 44,700
Reuben Hoang – 43,800
Tom Marchese – 43,300
Andom Ghebre – 43,000
Stephen Buell – 41,600
Charles Vitale – 37,400
Henry Lu – 36,400
Bryan Dunn – 36,300
Peter Johnson – 36,000
Tim Reilly – 36,000
Frank Stepuchin – 34,800
Ajay Gnanasambanthan – 28,900
Seth Davies – 28,800
Alexander Lynskey – 25,200
Peter Treglia – 24,400
Jake Schwartz – 23,500
Zachary Smiley – 20,600
Peter Cross Iii – 19,300
Lawrence Ma – 12,600
Giuseppe Pantaleo – 11,300
Tony Dunst – 11,100

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive.com