Sergei Petrushevskii Tops Day 1a of $2M GTD Global Poker Championship; Costa Close Behind

Day 1a of the $2,200 Global Poker Championship, running at Merit Crystal Cove Casino as part of the 2026 Mediterranean Poker Party, has concluded. Of the 124 total entries to the flight, 19 made it through. They are in the money and will return on Day 2 to play for a share of the $2,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.

After an excellent run throughout the day, Sergei Petrushevskii topped the counts with 2,420,000. Petrushevskii doubled up during the first level and kept on gaining momentum. During the penultimate level, he delivered a double knockout with pocket rockets in a pot that sent his stack soaring above the two million mark.

Petrushevskii is closely tailed by Felipe Costa, who bagged for 2,135,000. Costa lost some of his stack after being forced to fold to a four-bet, but soon made it back when he picked up pocket kings in an all-in confrontation.

Costa is the only player other than Petrushevskii to breach two million chips, and has more than double the chip stack of fourth place Andrej Desset, who bagged for 1,020,000. Serkan Sariaslan sits in third with 1,245,000.

Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts

Rank	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	Sergei Petrushevskii	Russian Federation	2420000	81
2	Felipe Costa	Brazil	2135000	71
3	Serkan Sariaslan		1245000	41
4	Andrej Desset	Slovakia	1020000	34
5	Moussa Ahmad	Lebanon	880000	29
6	Mehmet Dalkilic	Turkey	755000	25
7	Dmitry Gromov	Russian Federation	725000	24
8	George-Mircea Tomescu	Romania	575000	19
9	Ghanim Dashti	Kuwait	508000	17
10	Yiannis Liperis	Cyprus	390000	13

Still in the mix are Moussa Ahmad, who won the $10,400 GGMillion$ event at the Onyx Super High Roller Series last year for a cool $1,000,000; Dmitry Gromov, who has over $4 million in cashes to his name; and Yiannis Liperis, who sits atop the All Time Money List as Cyprus' number one player.

There's still two more chances for players to find a bag. Day 1c kicks off tomorrow at 12 p.m. local time, sticking with the same structure of 100,000 starting chips and 30-minute blinds. Players who bag from any of the four total starting flights return for Day 2 on September 19 to play deeper into the money.