Luke Schwartz Leads on Day 2 of WPT London

It’s business time for Luke Schwartz at the Mayfair Palm Beach Casino.

With starting flights out of the way, WPT London began the task of whittling the survivors down to a final table today. Tournament director Jack McClelland took a page out of his Bellagio Cup VI playbook and kept registration open all the way through the end of Level 8, enticing a few late arrivals like Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Jeffrey Lisandro to get into the game. 

Once the last chance to get a ticket on this train was gone, the total number of entrants stood at 171 – not a number that will blow anyone away, but not a bad total for the WPT’s first stop in London (with an EPT event running concurrently in Portugal, no less). The total prize pool was £820,800 ($1.27 million); 18 players will get paid, with 18th receiving £8,848 ($13,591) and £273,783 ($420,558) set aside for the winner.

As for who that winner will be, there’s still the matter of playing two more full days of poker before we can find out. Priyan de Mel started the day with the best chance of the 90 remaining players, holding a tournament-leading chip stack of 235,000. Right behind de Mel was 2010 WSOP bracelet winner Richard Ashby (229,800), with eight-time WSOP bracelet winner Erik Seidel (226,200) right on his heels. Not too far behind is Phil Ivey, who will be looking for a record-tying 10th WPT final table appearance. As of right now, though, the chip leader is none other than sandwich-thieving poker pro Luke Schwartz, who put a cooler on Seidel for most of his stack. That got Schwartz into something of a confrontation over table etiquette with Phil Ivey. With more than 140,000 in his own stack, Ivey won’t be rolling over for the brash Brit anytime soon.

Play will continue today until 27 players remain, with those survivors coming back to resume their journey to the first WPT London final table at 12 p.m. local time tomorrow.