Francis Foord-Brown Tops Day 1e of the partypokerLIVE MILLIONS in Nottingham
It was another busy day at the home of poker in the United Kingdom, as both the main room as well as the Marquee room of the Dusk Till Dawn Nottingham cardroom were in use for the last Live Day 1 of the partypokerLIVE MILLIONS £5,300 Main Event. While the official numbers are yet to be confirmed, it seems that the £6m guaranteed flagship tournament of the festival has almost reached the guarantee already thanks to the additional 445 unique entries and 35 re-entries on Day 1e.
Furthermore, all players that carry chips over into Day 2 at the Dusk Till Dawn, as well as new participants, can still enter the competition and take advantage of a single re-entry option during the first two levels and subsequent break on Thursday, April 20th at approximately 3.50 p.m. local time. The blinds are rolled back to 10,000/20,000 with a running ante of 2,000, and all new entries would commence their attempt at claiming the guaranteed first-place payout of £1,000,000 with 50 big blinds.
Tomorrow's Day 2 will feature a total of eight levels of 75-minute with a split dinner break, and the field of hopefuls will be cut down significantly. It appears that Francis Foord-Brown will be leading the pack with 7,700,000, as that's what the Brit bagged up tonight. Foord-Brown scored his second-best result just two months ago after finishing 4th in the UO London Main Event for £23,000, but the payday here in Nottingham may very well be far bigger.
Other big stacks and notables include Carlos Sanchez Diaz (6,043,000), Ireland's Paul Carr (5,920,500), 2015 WPT Nottingham Main Event champion Iaron Lightbourne (5,706,000), Tomas Soderstrom (5,471,000), Steven Warburton (5,000,000), Lee Egan (4,186,000) and former back-to-back World Poker Tour champion Marvin Rettenmaier (3,758,000).
A trio of partypoker representatives also made it through in Mike Sexton (2,571,500), Boris Becker (1,992,000) and Tony Dunst (1,630,000), while fellow ambassadors Padraig Parkinson, Johnny Lodden, Natalia Breviglieri and Jan-Peter Jachtmann were eliminated during the ten 60-minute levels. Jachtmann was done for the day after a big three-way all in early on, and Parkinson's ace-king suited for flopped top pair and top kicker stood no chance at the flopped set of eighty by Gerald Karlic.
Other notables that will have to re-enter in order to take a shot at the guaranteed £6,000,000 prize pool are Sam Grafton, Adrian Mateos, Usman Siddique, Rehman Kassam, Joris Ruys, Ben Vinson, Jason Wheeler, Ben Heath, Felipe Ramos and Keven Stammen, as they were all sent to the rail as well.
Such a mammoth Day 1e field was going to take time to reduce, but several players endured early setbacks. Ian Simpson lost 70% of his million-chip starting stack when he ran his nut flush into a straight flush. Simpson would recover his starting stack on a comeback trail, but others were not so successful. Steve Watts lost not one but two entries. First his two-pair all-in on the flop lost to a straight draw after he was committed. Finally, he had top two pair against Steve O’Dwyer’s turned full house and called off his tournament life on the river.
O’Dwyer was the early pacesetter, and not just in the first few levels. The American-Irish High roller crusher was quick out of the blocks but kept sprinting, hoping to follow on from yet more recent success with another title. Seven-figure scores are his specialty – a nice one to have – and to win a million in pound sterling on Sunday would boost him to above Jason Mercier in the all-time money list. O'Dwyer advanced with an above-average 3,071,000, while Simpson has plenty of work ahead with 747,000.
Towards the end of the day, the action heated up significantly and fewer than 200 players out of the 480-entry strong field for Day 1e bagged up and will return tomorrow as of 1 p.m. local time to join all other Day 2 qualifiers at the Dusk Till Dawn. This includes online qualifiers from PartyPoker, as well as players that advanced through one of the Live Day 1s in Nottingham or via other live partners such as the 2017 Irish Open.
One thing is for certain: The poker action will be buzzing once again when the tournament recommences, and the PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor to provide all the good and bad beats, setups and roller coaster runouts.