Thijs Hilberts Bags Up The Lead At Day 1B Of The WPT Prime Gold Coast Championship 2025

Photo: Thijs Hilberts

Day 1B of the WPT Prime Gold Coast Championship 2025 buzzed up the main floor of The Star Casino as 217 runners made their way in hopes of becoming this year’s next champion.

For a large majority of the day, Anthony Khalil held the chip lead, and at one point, he had breached the Day 1A leader’s stack. However, by bagging time, he was one notch down and up top was Dutch pro Thijs Hilberts who rallied during the last level of the day. Hilberts bagged up 751,000 (94 big blinds) which currently places him second overall in the Day 2 list.

The day wrapped up with 28 players advancing to the next round. Other notable players powering through were Amin Riyazati, Natalia Rozova, and Jusin Chu, all of them in the top 10 of today’s flight. Here is the complete list of the Day 1B survivors:

Day 1b Final Chip Counts

Thijs Hilberts – 751,000 ( 94 bb)
Anthony Khalil – 609,000 ( 76 bb)
Ryan Henry – 551,000 ( 69 bb)
Anthony Russo – 546,000 ( 68 bb)
Patrick Barba – 496,000 ( 62 bb)
Natalia Rozova – 469,000 ( 59 bb)
Justin Chu – 420,000 ( 53 bb)
Amin Riyazati – 410,000 ( 51 bb)
Patrick Murphy – 397,000 ( 50 bb)
James Rubinski – 343,000 ( 43 bb)
Darren Ooi – 300,000 ( 38 bb)
Mishel Anunu – 272,000 ( 34 bb)
Takahiro Tateno – 270,000 ( 34 bb)
Hadi Noordin – 268,000 ( 34 bb)
Meng Yu – 263,000 ( 33 bb)
Wei Zhu – 241,000 ( 30 bb)
Shinsuke Suzuki – 231,000 ( 29 bb)
Gareth Edmonds – 204,000 ( 26 bb)
Yoon Kang – 204,000 ( 26 bb)
Matthew Evans – 202,000 ( 25 bb)
Michael Clair – 183,000 ( 23 bb)
Nathan Mcclelland – 181,000 ( 23 bb)
Guangyu Wang – 175,000 ( 22 bb)
Peter Lin – 158,000 ( 20 bb)
Carmelo Guerreri – 156,000 ( 20 bb)
Jean-Charles Brunelle – 155,000 ( 19 bb)
Ken Suen – 134,000 ( 17 bb)
Viv Banala – 98,000 ( 12 bb)

Combined with Day 1A which ended with 25 survivors, a total of 53 players have secured their Day 2 spot and will return on Tuesday, March 25 at 11:30am. Currently leading the race is Craig Blight with 770,000 in chips. 

Before that takes place, there are still two starting days remaining. Up next is Day 1C which runs on Sunday, March 23 starting at 11:30am. Buy-in is AUD 2,000. Players begin with a deep 40,000 starting stack, equivalent to 200 times the opening blinds. This deep structure will see blinds increase every 40 minutes. Players have until the start of Level 10 to jump in. The flight bags up at the end of 16 levels or when 12.5% of the field is reached.