The Final Flight of The RPT Montana State Poker Championship Begins at 2 pm
Welcome back to Billings, Montana where The Roughrider Poker Tour is hosting the Montana State Poker Championship for the eighth year in a row. Today sees the second of two flights kick off as the players will utilize their last chance of playing for the title. They will all congregate at The Billings Hotel and Convention center where the biggest tournament in the state of Montana will commence.
A total of 146 entrants fired yesterday and leading the way of the 25 survivors is Dave Ouellette, who ended the day with 803,000. Ouellette found his luck on the third bullet of the day as in the final three levels of the night, he rose from average stack to massive chip leader after a couple of big confrontations with RPT points leader Mike Fick. Others who survived included 2022 Montana State Poker Champion Frank Lucero (671,000), WSOP Bracelet Winner Chad Himmelspach (471,000), tournament crusher Miles Barnum (184,000), and form RPT player of the year Arlie Brandvold (92,000).
Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dave Ouellette | 803,000 |
| 2 | Donovan Thomas | 787,000 |
| 3 | Jacob Brouse | 736,000 |
| 4 | Frank Lucero | 671,000 |
| 5 | Merle Bierschenk | 545,000 |
| 6 | John Rohrbach | 534,000 |
| 7 | Lance Schuchard | 522,000 |
| 8 | Virgil Taylor | 442,000 |
| 9 | Chad Himmelspach | 416,000 |
| 10 | Whitney Bell | 403,000 |
This year sees the buy in increase to $625 with an estimated prizepool of $200,000. Players will sit down with 60,000 in chips with the levels starting at 100/200 with a 200 big blind ante. Levels will last 40 minutes each with a break occurring at the conclusion of every three levels. The 60-minute dinner break will occur at the conclusion of level 6 around 5:40 pm. After that, registration will continue until the beginning of Level 13, then players will play until either the conclusion of Level 15, or to 12.5% of the entrants remain.
All the players will have the ability to fire into this tournament a maximum of three times.The survivors of this flight will bag up and return on Sunday, April 14th at 11:00 am to play down to a winner while combining with the other 25 players. Players who bag up twice will receive a minimum cash for their efforts.
Stay tuned to PokerNews for all updates regarding The Roughrider Poker Tour.