The WPT Rolling Thunder $3,500 Main Event, held at Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln, California, is entering its penultimate day with poker pro Ankush Mandavia from Atlanta, Georgia leading the 52 remaining survivors. Mandavia will start Day 3 of the tournament with a massive chip stack of 937,500, good for 188 big blinds.
The player was the chip leader at the start of Day 2 as well. Day 3 of the event is set to kick off today at 12 pm local time. Imaze Hasnai follows Mandavia with 797,500 in chips. Mohsin Charania will start the day third in chips with 691,500. It is interesting to note that Charania is going for his third WPT title, after he has previously won the 2014 WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic $10,400 WPT Main Event and the 2013 bwin WPT Grand Prix de Paris €7,500 Main Event.
The WPT Rolling Thunder $3,500 Main Event featured two starting flights in two separate days. By the end of those, it was announced that the event had attracted a total of 409 entries. Those created a prize pool of $1,323,800. The top 45 finishers are to receive a portion of the money, with min-cash worth $7,329. The winner’s share of the prize pool would amount to $290,112, if no deal is struck between players over the course of the game.
As mentioned above, play is set to resume today at noon local time with 52 returning to play down to the official six-handed final table.
Start-of-the-day chip leader Mandavia has been quite active on the live circuit over the past year. The player has collected more than $800,000 since the beginning of 2016. Early in January, the Atlanta-based poker pro took 3rd place in the PCA $100,000 Super High Roller 8-Handed, scooping a payout of $787,640 for his performance.
Late last year, the player appeared at the final table of another major high roller tournament. He finished 5th in the WPT Alpha8 $100,000 High Roller to collect the amount of $309,015. A third-place finish in a $25,000 buy-in Aria High Roller event for a payout of $141,000 and a fourth-place finish in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $25,400 High Roller for $186,200 were also among Mandavia’s important poker achievements in 2015. Overall, the player has collected a total of $2,349,443 in live tournament earnings.
