Borgata Poker Open Main Event Underway

The Borgata Poker Open in Atlantic City is the latest stop on the World Poker Tour.  A field of 516 players paid the entry fee, which is a drop of almost 10% from last year.

The Borgata Poker Open has a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million dollars which is more than the tournament actually took in. One of the early leaders was Brandon Cantu who won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2006.

Cantu also won the Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament for a million dollars earlier this year. Also part of the field are many poker pros some of which are already gone. John Phan, Michael Mizrachi and David Singer all busted out in Day 1.

One name that is familiar to poker fans is Steve Dannemann. He finished 2nd in the 2006 World Series of Poker main event but hasn’t done much since. He is among the early leaders. The winner of the Borgata Poker Open will take down over $1.4 million dollars.

The Borgata Poker Open will conclude with final table play on Thursday. The final table action will be aired on Fox Sports Net as part of the World Poker Tour coverage. This is season number seven for the World Poker Tour, but the first on FSN. The previous seasons were on the Travel Channel and GSN.

Following the Borgata Poker Open the WPT moves to Fallsview Casino Resort in Ontario, Canada for the 2008 North American Poker Championship. This tournament is very popular in Canada and always seems to generate a large field.

In other poker tourney news, the EPT Barcelona Open final table has been set. A potpourri of countries is represented at the final table. There are two players from Germany and one each from the U.S., U.K., Belgium, Canada, Italy and Ireland. Martin Neilsen from the U.K. is the leader with just over 1.2 million in chips. Sebastian Ruthenberg also has just over $1.2 million in chips to sit in second place.