Toby Joyce and Craig Rimmer Lead the Way After Day 1d

Photo: Day 1d chip leader Toby Joyce

It was a very busy day in the poker room of The Star Gold Coast as the chips were flying on all tables for the final flight of the 2025 WPT Prime Gold Coast Championship Event. Thanks to 387 entries, the overall field size for the AUD$2,000 crown jewel of the festival grew to 1,106 entries and that boosted the prize pool all the way to AUD $1,918,500 (US $$1,203,091).

Despite it being a Monday, the final starting day was the far strongest and ensured that the tournament reached four figures for the third year in a row. Upon completion of sixteen levels of 40 minutes each, a duo was separated by a single big blind atop the leaderboard: Irishman Toby Joyce bagged the biggest stack with 760,000 and Craig Rimmer was hot on his heels with 748,000. Taiwan’s Chih Wei Fan also advanced with 700,000 and will return for Day 2 with a top ten overall stack.

WPT anchor Lynn Gilmartin advanced with 265,000 in chips while her better half, WPT Global ambassador Angel Guillen, was one of many notable casualties throughout the day. Former WPT Prime champion David Kozma from Hungary also bagged up chips, but he will have his work cut out for Day 2 as one of the shorter stacks on 90,000 (nine big blinds).

Photo: WPT anchor Lynn Gilmartin

Day 1a: 199 entries, 25 players advanced
Day 1b: 217 entries, 28 players advanced
Day 1c: 303 entries, 42 players advanced
Day 1d: 387 entries, 59 players advanced

The money bubble will be looming for the restart of Day 2 on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, as of 11.30 a.m. local time with blinds of 5,000-10,000 with a big blind ante of 10,000. For the penultimate tournament day, the schedule is set to conclude at the end of level 27 after 11 levels of 60 minutes each or wrap up earlier if the nine-handed final table has been reached prior.

Final Chip Counts Day 1d

Toby Joyce – 760,000 ( 95 bb)
Craig Rimmer – 748,000 ( 94 bb)
Chih Wei Fan – 700,000 ( 88 bb)
Noman Mirza – 637,000 ( 80 bb)
Steven Burgess – 623,000 ( 78 bb)
Eng Choi – 517,000 ( 65 bb)
Benn Mcauley – 516,000 ( 65 bb)
Robert Spano – 502,000 ( 63 bb)
Patrick Yazbeck – 444,000 ( 56 bb)
Xiangxi Zheng – 426,000 ( 53 bb)
Will Davies – 418,000 ( 52 bb)
Stewart Davidson – 399,000 ( 50 bb)
Tom Maguire – 369,000 ( 46 bb)
Steven Topakas – 338,000 ( 42 bb)
Hiroyuki Noda – 327,000 ( 41 bb)
Peter Robertson – 273,000 ( 34 bb)
Lynn Gilmartin – 265,000 ( 33 bb)
Mogens Hansen – 263,000 ( 33 bb)
Hieu Ngyuyen – 259,000 ( 32 bb)
Huy Lam – 258,000 ( 32 bb)
Haozhe Gan – 255,000 ( 32 bb)
Joseph Vinecombe – 252,000 ( 32 bb)
Tony Lu – 241,000 ( 30 bb)
Ashneel Sharma – 236,000 ( 30 bb)
Travis Endersby – 227,000 ( 28 bb)
Malcolm Trayner – 226,000 ( 28 bb)
Christian Cheng – 224,000 ( 28 bb)
Joshua McSwiney – 212,000 ( 27 bb)
John Atallah – 205,000 ( 26 bb)
Simerjeet Chawla – 197,000 ( 25 bb)
Jiapeng Yang – 197,000 ( 25 bb)
Ricardo Bono – 195,000 ( 24 bb)
Marc Liddell – 195,000 ( 24 bb)
Dong He – 191,000 ( 24 bb)
Chen-An Lin – 188,000 ( 24 bb)
Francesco Tripodi – 185,000 ( 23 bb)
Richard Tang – 179,000 ( 22 bb)
Linus Goh – 177,000 ( 22 bb)
Fadi Tabet – 174,000 ( 22 bb)
Benjamin Thiessen – 174,000 ( 22 bb)
Zachary Reinbold – 170,000 ( 21 bb)
Kyutae Park – 165,000 ( 21 bb)
Victor Wang – 161,000 ( 20 bb)
Oleg Ivanchenko – 155,000 ( 19 bb)
Genji Kawami – 153,000 ( 19 bb)
Romain Morvan – 145,000 ( 18 bb)
Armon Van Wijk – 139,000 ( 17 bb)
Sukhun Yun – 134,000 ( 17 bb)
Aaron Dall’acqua – 125,000 ( 16 bb)
Charles Caris – 122,000 ( 15 bb)
Brock Munro – 120,000 ( 15 bb)
Adrian Pacheco – 117,000 ( 15 bb)
Martin Ward – 100,000 ( 13 bb)
Daniel Hachem – 98,000 ( 12 bb)
Zhaofeng Gan – 98,000 ( 12 bb)
Miaolin Yu – 96,000 ( 12 bb)
Uno Bolovson – 93,000 ( 12 bb)
David Kozma – 90,000 ( 11 bb)
Dwight Dutton – 89,000 ( 11 bb)

Across the four starting days, only 154 players advanced and they will all aim to make the first step and finish inside the top 139 spots to secure a cash prize. Below is what all Day 1 survivors are competing for:

1st:  AU$320,003*  (~US $200,674*)
2nd:  AU$213,333 (~US $133,781)
3rd:  AU$157,726 (~US $98,910)
4th:  AU$117,802 (~US $73,874)
5th:  AU$88,892 (~US $55,744)
6th:  AU$67,773 (~US $42,500)
7th:  AU$52,218 (~US $32,746)
8th:  AU$40,659 (~US $25,497)
9th-10th:  AU$32,001 (~US $20,068)
11th-12th:  AU$25,458 (~US $15,965)
13th-14th:  AU$20,476 (~US $12,840)
15th-16th:  AU$16,653 (~US $10,443)
17th-20th:  AU$13,694 (~US $8,588)
21st-24th:  AU$11,390 (~US $7,143)
25th-32nd:  AU$9,583 (~US $6,009)
33rd-40th:  AU$8,156 (~US $5,115)
41st-48th:  AU$7,024 (~US $4,405)
49th-56th:  AU$6,120 (~US $3,838)
57th-64th:  AU$5,397 (~US $3,384)
65th-72nd:  AU$4,817 (~US $3,021)
73rd-80th:  AU$4,351 (~US $2,729)
81st-89th:  AU$3,981 (~US $2,496)
90th-98th:  AU$3,689 (~US $2,313)
99th-116th:  AU$3,461 (~US $2,170)
117th-139th:  AU$3,290 (~US $2,063)

* The winner also receives the US $10,400 seat into the season-ending WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas.

NOTE:  For worldwide consistency across all WPT events, the amounts on the Payouts page are in U.S. dollars. For this event, payouts have been converted using a rate of AU$1.00 = US $0.6271.