Legends of Poker Pays Billionth Dollar, Pat Lyons Looks to Defend

For the last few days, Poker Central has been building towards the World Poker Tour awarding their one-billionth dollar of prize money and after four days of play at The Bicycle Hotel & Casino, that day is finally here. 89 players remain from the 763-player WPT Legends of Poker Main Event field, which is the second-largest WPT Legends of Poker Main Event in WPT history, and early on Day 3, the WPT will make history. 

Of those remaining players, 81 will cash in this historic event and from there, players will fight for pieces of an over $2.7 million prize pool. Oddie Dardon is in the driver’s seat and controls the chip lead heading into Day 3, after bagging 775,000 chips yesterday, but there are some big names near the top of the leader board.

Former WPT Player of the Year JC Tran is currently second in chips, with David “ODB” Baker rounding out the top-five. Day 1 chip leaders Cody Slaubaugh and Valentine Vornicu have continued to build, while the newest member of the WPT Broadcast Team has caught up, after starting his climb on Day 2. Phil Hellmuth was one of 48 players that entered before the start of play yesterday and he spun his stack over the 350,000-chip mark, putting himself in a good position to make a run at his first-career WPT title. 

WPT Champions Club members Sam Panzica, Scotty Nguyen and Marvin Rettenmaier are each sitting around 250,000 and the “World Famous” Pat Lyons is still alive in his title defense. Lyons won the 2016 WPT Legends of Poker Main Event for over $615,000 and there is even more up for grabs this year.

The WPT Live Updates team will follow Lyon’s quest for back-to-back WPT Legends of Poker Main Event wins and the historic run towards the money during Day 3. Once the event gets down to the final table though, fans from all over the world will be able to watch the action live on PokerGO. Thursday’s final table will be the first World Poker Tour event ever streamed on PokerGO and until then, follow Poker Central for WPT Legends of Poker daily recaps and pre-final table features of one of the WPT’s headlining events.