Michel Molenaar and David Miscikowski Bag Chip Lead on Day 1 of the $10,400 MPP High Roller

It's been a very long day on Day 1 of the $10,400 Mediterranean Poker Party High Roller, here at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel in Northern Cyprus. The main explanation is that instead of twelve, fourteen 40-minute levels were played. As a result, only 33 players managed to find a bag at the end of the night out of 159 entries (ten more than the last edition). In total, this field generated a prize pool of $1,526,400.

Among these qualified players, Michel Molenaar ended up as the chip leader with 4,135,000 chips, ahead of David Miscikowski (4,050,000), who follows closely behind. EPT Monte-Carlo Jovan Kenjic is in third place so far, with a 3,870,000 chip stack.

Rank	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	Michel Molenaar	Netherlands	4,135,000	69
2	David Miscikowski	United States	4,050,000	68
3	Jovan Kenjic	Serbia	3,870,000	65
4	Robert Heidorn	Germany	3,560,000	59
5	Stoyan Madanzhiev	Bulgaria	3,300,000	55
6	Ermanno Di Nicola	Italy	3,285,000	55
7	Nikita Kuznetsov	Russia	3,115,000	52
8	Nikita Kalinin	Russia	3,035,000	51
9	Marcin Dziubdziela	Poland	2,485,000	41
10	Damir Zhugralin	Kazakhstan	2,425,000	40

WSOP winners Stoyan Madanzhiev (3,300,000) and Ermanno Di Nicola (3,285,000) both secured big stacks for Day 2, and the same goes for Damir Zhugralin (2,425,000) or Ehsan Amiri (2,350,000).

Steven Warburton (1,900,000), Samuel Ju (1,870,000), Roman Gadzhiev (1,825,000), Igor Pihela Jr (1,635,000), Timo Kamphues (1,445,000), Andrey Pateychuk (1,180,000), Mehdi Chaoui (1,120,000), and Ami Barer (1,070,000) will also be back on Day 2 with a stack just below average.

After having one of the biggest stacks in the field earlier in the day, Boris Kolev didn't bag more than one million chips (900,000), but his stack will still be bigger than Weiran Pu's 635,000-chip stack. Dmitry Zakharov doubled up during the last minutes of the day, but with 590,000, he'll only have 10 blinds for Day 2. Same situation for Jon Vallinas Santos and his 575,000 chips.

Day 2 begins tomorrow at 1 p.m. local time and will pick up on Level 15, with blinds of 30,000-60,000 and a 60,000 big blind ante. The first goal of the day will be to reach the money, as 23 players will be paid with a minimum cash-prize of $17,000. Then, the tournament will continue until a winner is crowned and wins $365,000.