588 Players Survived Day 1 of the PokerStars Blowout Series: $109 NLHE – The Big Blowout!
After almost nine hours of play, Day 1 of the first of four The Big Blowout events has come to an end on PokerStars with 588 players making it through to Day 2. The tournament featured a huge $5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool for the $109 price tag that came with participating in the event.
There were 25,505 unique players who took a shot or two, or three, or even four to get to 37,673 entries which meant that there was a big overlay in this tournament. There were 5,263 players who would cash at least $259 while the winner will walk away on Tuesday, December 29 with $485,827 which would be an amazing return on investment for any player in this tournament.
Claiming the Day 1 chip lead is Russia's "ZERGA_77" with 6,885,381 in chips which will be worth 172 big blinds at the start of Day 2. Following them in the top five are "samot54" (6,552,197), Gabriel "aaurelio" Moura (5,876,013), "cipyclimbb" (5,728,658), and "trzcinsky" with 5,505,941.
Other familiar names to have made it through to Day 2 include Alex "AlexGelinski" Gelinski, Nicolas "PKaiser" Fierro, Daniel "dougiedan678" McAulay, Patrick "pads1161" Leonard, Daniel "Oxota" Dvoress, Diego "Die Ventura" Ventura, Sean "MonkeyBudg" Prendiville, and Fabiano "Kovalski1" Kovalski with an above-average stack.
But not everyone was fortunate enough to virtually bag for Day 2, players like Bert "girafganger7" Stevens, Guilherme "Guizãoo_" Carmo, Simon "DaDumon" Grabenschweiger, Claas "ssicK_OnE" Segebrecht, and Pavel "MountainRo$e" Veksler all busted in the last hour of the day.
All players have already secured $894 for their bankrolls but will all be eyeing those pay jumps on Day 2 and set their targets on making it to the final 27 players for Day 3 where a prize of at least $6,249 will be waiting for them.
Day 2 will resume at 6:05 p.m. GMT on Monday, December 28 with around 10 minutes left of Level 32 which features a small blind of 20,000, a big blind of 40,000, and a running ante of 5,000. Level duration will remain at 15 minutes each until the start of Day 3 when there are 27 players left. The level duration will then increase to 20 minutes.
PokerNews will be there from the start till the end for all the action so make sure to keep following along.
, Segebrecht continued with a bet of 206,745 for "cipyclimbb" to raise to 726,740 and was called.
m Segebrecht checked and then called the shove of "cipyclimbb" for the 1,597,842 he had behind.
to send Segebrecht out of the tournament before the end of the night.
, "mizzB111" continued with a bet of 140,000 for "07-27-08LIFE" to check-raise to 280,000. "mizzB111" shoved with the bigger stack and "07-27-08LIFE" called for the 1,192,940 they had behind. 
on the turn and the 
on the river for "mizzB111" to grab the chip lead.
, "TheU10" shoved for 122,477 for "Pharey" to make the call. "TheU10" tabled the 
for the rivered set.
completed the board.
, "SqeezMachine" bet 2,770 and was called by all.
, "SqeezMachine" continued with a shove for 11,054 which "bbaaa663" called. "KARABURE2" reshoved for 22,091 and so did "packerman77" for 26,236 which was called by "bbaaa663" too.
for "bbaaa663" to knock all three opponents out with the nut-flush.