Vilkov and Fast Among Leaders on Day 1a of partypoker MILLIONS Main
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Day 1a of the €10,300 Main Event at the 2019 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Europe is in the books at the King's Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. A total of 165 players registered for the tournament today and 101 of them made it through to the second day.
Mikhail Vilkov bagged what looks to be the biggest stack. He improved his 1,000,000 to an impressive 4,850,000 after eight hours of play. Other notable players who ended near the top of the chip counts are German high roller regular Dietrich Fast (4,255,000) and Daniel Rezaei (3,860,000).
Vilkov collected chips throughout the day and he even had 5,000,000 in front of him at one point. He closed out the day by finishing just a little bit under that mark.
Fast, meanwhile, busted Jonas Lauck in the last level of the day to give his stack a boost to 2.5 million. He never looked back from that moment and finished the day by winning another 1.7 million chips of the other players at his table.
Tough Day for Team partypoker
The day started in Rozvadov with a little over 50 players on the clock and that number quickly grew to the eventual total of 165.
Plenty of notables found a bag at the end of the first day. Among them are Patrick Mahoney (3,280,000), Niall Farrell (3,215,000), David Hu (3,070,000), Sam Grafton (2,460,000), Lawrence Bayley (1,800,000), Julian Thomas (1,740,000), Gianluca Speranza (1,245,000), and Andrea Ricci (765,000).
Another familiar face that made it to the second day is partypoker Pro Joao Simao. However, most of his teammates were unable to join him. The ones that gave it a shot but failed to find a bag were Jeff Gross of Team Online and Josip Simunic. Simunic had a short day when he sat down from the start. He wasn't able to get anything going and lost a bunch of his stack with pocket tens against ace-queen. He busted out only minutes later with ace-queen against pocket nines.
Gruissem locked horns with his former student but neither player would see bagging time.
Another member of the partypoker team that entered the day was Philipp Gruissem. He battled it out at a tough table with the likes of Markus Durnegger and Alex Keating. Both of them failed to make it to Day 2. Gruissem also locked horns with his former student Jack Sinclair, but neither player would see bagging time.
Plenty of others gave it a shot but didn't make it to the second day. Steve Warburton, Mateusz Moolhuizen, Vojtech Ruzicka, Bryan Piccioli, Ben Heath, Triton 100K Super High Roller champion Orpen Kisacikoglu, and Aymon Hata all were eliminated throughout the day.
Day 1b and Day 2 Still on Tap
They do still have the option to reenter the tournament through Day 1b or they can register on Day 2. Late registration is still open until the end of the second level on Day 2 and plenty of entries will still be made on Day 1b of the tournament to reach that €5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.
Day 1b will kickoff at noon on Thursday. Another eight one-hour levels are in store. The day will be done at approximately 8:45 p.m. local time and that will give the players enough rest to battle it out for the money on a combined Day 2.
Make sure to stay tuned to PokerNews to follow the rest of the coverage of the 2019 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Europe in Rozvadov.
Milko van Winden has been a part of the poker media corps since 2017. Starting out as [I]PokerNews[/I] contributor and live reporter, Milko is now the Digital Media Manager at [i]PokerNews[/i].
