Birthday Boy Richard Balkau Tops 30 Survivors on Day 1a of 2023 WPT Prime Vietnam

Day 1a chip leader Richard Balkau

A successful first starting day has come to an end at the Crown Poker Club in Ha Noi, Vietnam. There were a total of 238 entries in the first of three flights for the 2023 WPT Prime Main Event, which topped the attendance on Day 1a (145) of the inaugural stop of the mid-stakes tour in 2022 by a significant margin. Out of those who ponied up the VND25,000,000 buy-in, only 30 players advanced and Australia’s Richard Balkau topped the leaderboard with 935,000.

After a mere 20 minutes of play, that seemed quite unlikely as the Hijack player from Down Under saw his starting stack of 30,000 cut down to just 10% by Bien Mai and his rivered broadway straight. However, Balkau scored several double-ups throughout the day. Among the victims of his hot run was also 2022 WPT Prime Cambodia champion David Erquiaga, who first doubled Balkau to then run ace-king into aces. The defending champion of this event, Zarvan Tumboli, was also in the Day 1a field but bowed out soon after the late registration closed.

Top 5 Chip Counts After Day 1a:

1st: Richard Balkau (Australia) – 935,000 (156 bb)
2nd: Anuj Yadav (India) – 643,000 (107 bb)
3rd: Akshay Nasa (India) – 552,000 (92 bb)
4th: Sumin Oh (South Korea) – 499,000 (83 bb)
5th: Khoi “Steve” Nguyen (Vietnam) – 360,000 (60 bb)

Second-placed Anuj Yadav was responsible for the final two eliminations of the night. He first knocked out fellow Indian player Kanchan Sharma with eights versus nines thanks to a four-card flush, then held up with up with kings against the ace-king of Hoang Quang Nguyen to burst the bubble.

Notable big stacks include Kyle Bao Diep (346,000), Harsh Bubna (280,000), Anton Widjaya (260,000), Jia Yi Low (198,000), Florent Remi (122,000), and Amit Kaushik (98,000). Day 1a concluded with 2:23 minutes left in level 15 at blinds of 3,000-6,000 and a big blind ante of 6,000, which is very likely the restart time for Day 2 unless one of the remaining two flights bursts the bubble even faster.

All players unhappy with their accumulated stack sizes can participate in the last two flights on May 26 and 27 respectively to try and run up an even bigger stack, which will then be carried over into the money stages. Should a player bag up more than once, any subsequent successful attempts will be rewarded with an additional min-cash.

Some notables who are expected to join the action once more after bowing out on Day 1a are Akinobu Kirishima, Siddharth Jolly, Junnie Pamplona, Trent Fechter, Dhaval Mudgal, Kunal Patni, and Anthony Cierco to name all but a few of the big names that came up short today.

The WPT.com live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide as much of the exciting live poker action from Vietnam as possible en route to crowning a new champion. The eventual winner on May 30 will also take home the brand new Prime Champions Cup, which was revealed at the venue.

Prime Champions Cup