Joni Jouhkimainen Bags Day 1b Lead While Adrian State Bubbles Again

The $25,000 Main Event continued with Day 1b at the 2026 Onyx High Roller Series drawing 98 entries in the second starting flight of the $5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool event. By the time play wrapped up for the night, 15 players remained to bag chips and progress to Day 2 inside the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa.

When play came to an end, Joni Jouhkimainen topped the chip counts after bagging 3,630,000. He was followed closely by Daniel Rezaei with 3,225,000. Quan Zhou rounded out the top three on 2,485,000, while Matthias Lipp finished fourth with 2,000,000 as the last player to breach the two-million mark.

Day 1b Top Ten Chip Counts

Rank	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	Joni Jouhkimainen	Finland	3,630,000	91
2	Daniel Rezaei	Austria	3,225,000	81
3	Quan Zhou	China	2,485,000	62
4	Matthias Lipp	Austria	2,000,000	50
5	Geoffrey Mooney	Australia	1,750,000	44
6	Jessica Teusl	Austria	1,655,000	41
7	Mikita Badziakouski	Belarus	1,645,000	41
8	Fahredin Mustafov	Bulgaria	1,500,000	38
9	Eyal Eshkar	Israel	1,400,000	35
10	Harout Ghazarian	Canada	1,345,000	34

Jouhkimainen max-late registered, sitting down just after the dinner break, and it didn’t take long for him to surge up the chip counts. He picked up a huge boost when Pieter Aerts four-bet jammed pocket tens into his aces, before winning a big pot multi-way where he put Mehdi Chaoui to the test on the river. Then, on the soft bubble, Jouhkimainen scooped a pot worth over 1.5 million against Adrian State, rivering a baby flush and cementing his position at the summit by the end of the night.

An unusual and unenviable Onyx record fell to State, who bubbled the Main Event for a second straight day, once again from the very same table. After stone bubbling Day 1a by shoving ace-nine into ace-jack, State met a similar fate on Day 1b, four-bet jamming close to 30 big blinds with big slick on the direct bubble, only to run into Rezaei’s pocket aces in a cruel case of deja vu.

Among the other notables to make it through were Jessica Teusl (1,655,000), Mikita Badziakouski (1,645,000), and defending champion Fahredin Mustafov (1,500,000), who knows exactly what it takes to go all the way in this event. Also safely into the money were the ever-talkative Daniil Kiselev (1,100,000), and Aren Bezhanyan (905,000), who spent a long stretch of Day 1b near the top of the counts.

With Day 1c Turbo having closed late registration and drawing 44 entries, the total field stands at 207 across the three opening flights. All surviving players will reconvene for Day 2 at 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 5, with the blinds rolled back to the earliest finishing level and 60-minute levels starting as the tournament plays down to the final table.