Gruissem and Stokkan on Top After Day 1B in Barcelona
The second starting day of the 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Grand Final Barcelona €10,300 Main Event at one of Europe's hotbeds of poker, the Casino Barcelona, attracted a field of 150 entries. After 12 levels of 45 minutes, that number was cut down to 40 survivors who already have their seat for Day 2 on Friday, April 13th, 2018. Along with the 93 players out of 338 entries that bagged up on Day 1A, that makes for 133 players that don't need to take another shot at the juicy guaranteed prize pool of €10,000,000.
Once all was done and dusted, a very familiar poker player was sitting at the top of the count. Team partypoker's Philipp Gruissem edged past Preben Stokkan after winning a big pot off Aristeidis Moschonas in the final hands of the night to claim the top spot with 10.97 million, while Stokkan advanced with 10.74 million. Stokkan, who won the MILLIONS $10,300 High Roller and finished 6th in the Main Event at the 2017 Caribbean Poker Party, went through his table like a wrecking ball and busted several opponents in the late stages.
Other big stacks and notables among the Day 1B survivors are Thomas Muehloecker (8.54 million), Joe Serock (7.915 million), Mikhail Rudoy (4.81 million), Pierre Calamusa (4.8 million), Joey Weissman (4.61 million), Albert Daher (4.33 million), €101,000 Super High Roller runner-up Stephen Chidwick (3.815 million) and 2018 MILLIONS Germany Main Event champion Viktor "Isildur1" Blom (3.765 million).
Besides Gruissem, only one further partypoker ambassador made it through in Joao Simao (2.755 million), while Isaac Haxton was eliminated. Other big names that left without anything to show for were the likes of Timothy Adams, Alex Foxen, Max Silver, Anthony Zinno, Felipe Ramos, David Laka, Mustapha Kanit, Juha Helppi, Steve O'Dwyer, Martin Jacobson, and Rainer Kempe. Adrian Mateos fired two bullets on Day 1A without success and the third time wasn't a charm either when his pocket nines were no good against the pocket queens of Aristeidis Moschonas.
Many pocket aces were cracked within the last few levels of the day, among others it were Bryan Piccioli, Artem Metalidi and Florin Tirtea that failed to win with the best hand preflop. Tirtea got it in against the flopped top two pair of Blom, who added further misery by improving to quads queens, while Piccioli was all in preflop and Stokkan flopped a set of jacks. Metalidi was poised for a comeback in the penultimate level, but his aces couldn't hold up against the ace-queen suited of Sofian Benaissa.
While Day 1B was smaller than the first flight, the tables at times featured no fewer well-known poker players and even ended up in battles of eight pros with millions of dollars in earnings between them. Fewer than one third got through and all those unfortunate enough not to claim a stack yet have another two chances to do so.
Day 1C starts at 12 p.m. local time on Thursday, April 12th, 2018, with six levels of late registration while the final Day 1D kicks off at 5 p.m. local time and offers nine levels of late registration. Both days feature a single re-entry option during the registration period and the PokerNews live reporting team will be there to bring you all the action from the tables.