Scuderi Grabs Second Ring; Day 1a of Mini Main is Huge

The second day of action for WSOP-C Calgary October is now complete, featuring a newcomer to the game winning his second ring in 18 months, as well as a truly colossal Mini Main Event flight.

The main game on Thursday’s schedule was the Black Chip Bounty, a $400 game that put $100 from each buy-in aside for bounties, with $230 going to the prize pool. The game drew a solid turnout of 345 entries for combined prizes of $113,850. That was only about 20 entries below the total for this event in January’s series, continuing the trend of solid turnout for this new series.

Later in the day, the opening flight to the Mini Main Event kicked off at 4 PM, and it was a huge one. This event looks to be a rebranded version of the old 4-Flight structure, and compared to that game in January, Day 1a of this game was 15.5% bigger than the last time, with 276 entries, compared to 239 for 1a of the January 4-Flight.

Scuderi Wins Second Ring in 18 Months of Poker in Black Chip Bounty

• Event #3: $400 NLH Black Chip Bounty ($230 + $100 + $70)
• Entries: 345
• Prizes: $113,850 Combined ($34,500 Bounties, $79,350 Prizes)
• Winner: Stephen Scuderi ($17,383)

It was quite a night for Stephen Scuderi — and it’s been quite a start to his poker career. Scuderi’s first recorded cash was a ring at the inaugural Toronto WSOP Circuit in 2024 after he won the high roller there. Since then, he’d racked up 10 total cashes going into Thursday’s Black Chip Bounty.

Scuderi rode the wave with a big stack through much of the game. His name was among the chip leaders through most of the day, and he was a dominant force at the final table.

That said, despite the chip lead, it was runner-up Cindy Kerslake who did much of the work at the final table. Kerslake busted Braydon Brown (5th, $3,836), Michael Letal (4th, $5,406), and Minghuan Wu (3rd, $7,798) to set up the heads-up phase against Scuderi.

They were pretty even to start heads up, and Kerslake took an early lead when she flopped a king and held to go up about 2:1. That was when the momentum switched back to Scuderi.

He took a big lead in a hand where he hit a running flush against Kerslake’s straight to get to 6 million. That was the beginning of the end for Kerslake, and a few hands later, Scuderi flopped a set of ducks while Kerslake hit top-top with ace-ten.

The money went in, of course, and while Kerslake hit trip tens on the turn for boat outs, she bricked the river, and Scuderi’s ducks held for the win. This will slot in as his 3rd biggest cash, behind the High Roller ring and a runner-up finish at WSOP-C Toronto earlier this year. For an 18-month career in poker, 11 cashes, two rings, and a runner-up finish in a Circuit event is a pretty solid start.

Top Ten Results from Black Chip Bounty

For a full look at the Event #3 prizes, see the Payouts tab on the Live Reporting page.

Place	Player	Prize
1	Stephen Scuderi	$17,383
2	Cindy Kerslake	$11,504
3	Minghuan Wu	$7,798
4	Michael Letal	$5,406
5	Braydon Brown	$3,836
6	Ay Lor	$2,787
7	Michael Russell	$2,075
8	Trevor Otterson	$1,584
9	Allen Alejandro	$1,240
10	Josh Wallace	$997

Two Millionaires Emerge from Huge Opening to Mini Main Event

• Event #4: $400 NLH Mini Main Event Day 1A ($330 + $70)
• Entries: 14/276
• Prizes: $91,080 ($21,698 of that awarded on Day 1a)
• Chip Leader: Josh O’Neill-Trotta, 1.846 Million

The Mini Main Event is a new game on the schedule for this series, but it looks an awful lot like the old 4-Flight game as far as the structure is concerned. That said, after the first of four flights to Sunday’s Day 2, the numbers of this series are well above the 4-Flight numbers from January of this year.

With 276 entries, 1a finished more than 15% above the final numbers for January’s 1a, boding well for a huge prize pool at the end of this one. After the opening flight, there are 14 players waiting for Day 2, with Josh O’Neill-Trotta and Benny Sarnelli both sitting with more than 1 million chips. In addition, 28 more players cashed out of the event for a Day 1 cash in the opening flight.

With four flights to this game, it looks like it will easily cap $500k in prizes, and it may well flirt with $600k or more.

Day 1a Stacks

Player	Chips
Joshua O’Neill-Trotta	1,846,000
Benny Sarnelli	1,231,000
Nicholas Nowak	813,000
David Swaim	752,000
Tyler Fish	724,000
Kyle Dery	512,000
Nicholas Teeuwen	506,000
Ryan Cairns	352,000
Paolo Tana	315,000
Erin Pulchinski	313,000
Jacob Hobday	304,000
Eyal Pevzner	282,000
Micah Quinn	246,000
Shawn Sperber	115,000

Day 1a Prizes

Place	Player	Prize
15	Pascal Gregoire	$902
16	Alan Zhu	$902
17	Jordan(Jj) Johnstone	$902
18	Bernice Mclennan	$784
19	Nicholas Lee	$784
20	Heidi Zekl	$784
21	Cheuk Ng	$784
22	Connor Daynard	$784
23	Aaron Walters	$784
24	James Martin	$784
25	Ryan Orig	$784
26	Josh Myers	$784
27	Jeff Clarke	$746
28	Andy Truong	$746
29	Youssef Hmama	$746
30	Matthew Osorio	$746
31	Steven Parkin	$746
32	Robert Cobreil	$746
33	Josh Bennet	$746
34	John Senycz	$746
35	Pierre Joyal	$746
36	Jaskaran Brar	$746
37	Jiajie Sheng	$746
38	Jerry Li	$746
39	Seamus Mcgearty	$746
40	Colten Yamagishi	$746
41	Deven Lane	$746
42	Norapat Arunyakanon	$746