Mark It -- Day 1b is in the Books

It's been an impressive and exciting start to the 2009 Aussie Millions Poker Championships. Day 1a of Event #1 saw 342 runners turn up; Day 1b got an even larger turnout with 389 hopeful poker players all putting up the AUD 1,100 buy-in. Each of them had the same dream -- chasing down a first prize of AUD 150,000.

Even though this is the first preliminary event in a three-week poker festival, the local and international poker superstars turned out in force. With fewer than one in six making it through to Day 2, most of those superstars did not fare well. For Team World, Josh "JJProdigy" Field and David Bach were early departures. The home team didn't fare much better; Andrew Scott was out before Level 1 ended and was soon joined on the rail by a host of others.

The overnight chip leader of Day 1b appears to be Dean Blatt (145,300). He is followed closely by Jim Ghobrial (86,800) and by Ben Delaney (80,000), a young online player who has been playing near the top of his game the last few months. Each of the 56 players to survive today's flight will merge tomorrow with the 54 survivors from Day 1a to create a combined field of 110 runners for the conclusion of this event.

Play kicks off tomorrow at 12:30pm local time. By the time the day comes to an end at roughly midnight, someone will be AUD 150,000 richer. Join us to find out who it will be!