The anonymous John Doe S, who ended yesterday's Day 1c flight as chip leader, wasted little time adding to his massive stack on the first hand of today by taking out Artem Sadovskii.
Heads-up on a flop of 7♥6♣A♥, Sadovskii bet 6,000 from early position before Doe raised to around 40,000 in the big blind. Sadovskii called and the Q♥ fell on the turn.
Doe then moved all in and Sadovskii called for around 30,000 more with A♠J♣. Doe, though, had 7♣6♠ for two pair and held on the 2♣ river to secure the early knockout.
The first four starting flights of the 2024 Merit Poker Western Series $3,300 Main Event attracted a field of 511 entrants so far here at the Crystal Cove Hotel and Casino in North Cyprus. Of those 511 entrants, 223 players managed to find a bag and will be making their return for the second day.
Day 1a chip leader Samy Barka holds the overall chip lead going into Day 2 with 783,000 chips, worth 313 big blinds to start the day. Barka is most closely followed by Michel Habib (753,000) and Dmitry Yurasov (736,000). Yurasov bagging a top three stack is particularly noteworthy given that he took down the $3,300 Merit Poker Gangster Series Main Eventthis past October for $295,500.
2024 Merit Poker Western Series Top Ten Chip Counts
Place
Name
Country
Chip Count
Big Blinds
1
Samy Barka
France
783,000
313
2
Michel Habib
Lebanon
753,000
301
3
Dmitry Yurasov
Russia
736,000
294
4
Fabio Peluso
Italy
657,000
263
5
Daniel Henriques
Portugal
633,000
253
6
Jianwei Lin
China
619,000
248
7
Basem Abudavas
Russia
600,000
240
8
Mustafa Ercan
Turkey
596,500
239
9
John Doe S
N/A
538,500
215
10
John Doe
N/A
534,500
214
Other notables to advance to Day 2 include Benjamin Hamnett (427,000), Andrew Hedley (402,000), 2023 WSOP Main Event finalist Dean Hutchison (380,000), Andrea Dato (314,500), Maxime Chilaud (291,000), Helmut Phung (288,000), Milos Skrbic (275,500), Marius Kudzmanas (274,500), Vladimir Bozinovic (268,000), Monika Zukowicz (261,500), Qiang Xu (223,500), Ermanno Di Nicola (217,000), Roman Hrabec (209,500), Felipe Ketzer (197,000), Dmitry Gromov (193,500), Andrey Pateychuk (188,500), Shuang Luo (160,000), Guoliang Wei (146,500) and Dzmitry Urbanovich (146,500).
The second day of the event is scheduled to start at 12:00 p.m. local time. The players who qualified on the first day will return to Level 10, with the blinds set at 1,000/2,500 and a 2,500 big blind ante. The game will go on for another nine levels and is expected to conclude around 10:00 p.m. local time, with each level lasting for 60 minutes.
As always, stay tuned to PokerNews as we bring you all the exciting action for this event from the moment cards are in the air until a winner is crowned on Thursday, January 25.