Yiming Li Bags Millionaire Maker Day 1a Chip Lead
Day 1a of Event #17: $1,500 Millionaire Maker has concluded. It attracted a field of 2,564 players to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, and only 567 bagged up chips for Day 2.
Yiming Li shone brightest on the first of two flights, ending Day 1a with a tournament leading stack of 487,000. There us some distance between Li and the chasing pack; Donavan Dean is his nearest rival with 391,500 chips.
Mark Dube finds himself in third place after the first of two Day 1s. Dube came close to winning a bracelet in 2015 when he finished second in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo event. He has done his chances of securing some poker gold no harm at all by being fastest out of the blocks in this tournament.
Event #17: $1,500 Millionaire Maker Day 1a Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yiming Li | 487,000 |
| 2 | Donavan Dean | 391,500 |
| 3 | Mark Dube | 375,000 |
| 4 | Shan Jing | 374,500 |
| 5 | R.A. Villaluna | 366,000 |
| 6 | David Siegel | 363,000 |
| 7 | Nicholas Lebherz | 360,000 |
| 8 | Frank Bonacci | 352,500 |
| 9 | Keyu Qu | 347,500 |
| 10 | William Nguyen | 341,000 |
Plenty of well-known players were among those survivors, including, Chance Kornuth (324,000), Kitty Kuo (276,500), Asi Moshe (266,500), Anton Wigg (178,500), Shannon Shorr (101,000), Ryan Riess (97,000), and Adrian Mateos (70,000)
Not all players were fortunate to find a bag at the end of the day though, with such luminaries as Vanessa Kade, Shaun Deeb, and Tony Miles falling by the wayside before the curtain came down on proceedings.
Day 1b shuffles up at deals at 10:00 a.m. local time on October 9, and another bumper crowd is expected. Will anyone surpass Li's impressive stack? Stay tuned to PokerNews to find out.
and Shaun Deeb was eliminated. 
, the small blind bet 3,700 and Mateos called. 
checked through and on the river of 
the small blind led out 7,700 which after some thought, Mateos raised to 15,400. The small blind went into the tank for 30-seconds and he folded, giving Mateos the pot.
which gave Varnell a pair of aces to win the pot and put his stack as the biggest in the Pavilion room.
and Grafton doubled to over 40,000, leaving his opponent short.
checked through and both players showed down 
for a chop. 
. Hawkins went all in and his opponent called. 
