Dominykas Mikolaitis Bags Impressive Chip Lead at End of Day 1
After a grueling 14 and a half hours of play, Day 1 of Event #41: $2,500 Freezeout No-Limit Hold'em has ended with 135 players remaining. Dominykas Mikolaitis finished the day with an impressive lead, bagging a whopping stack of 1,000,000 from a starting stack of just 35,000.
Mikolaitis has multiple World Series of Poker cashes to his name, including his sixth-place finish in the 2020 GG Poker.com $10,000 Main Event, earning $253,425. The Lithuanian native is still looking for that elusive WSOP gold bracelet, and he's hoping to do that in the coming days. Following close behind is Julian Milliard-Feral, who bagged 742,000 in chips.
Mikolaitis emerged as the chip leader as the night neared the end when he three-bet from the small blind and the big blind ripped all-in for almost 300,000 in chips against his pocket jacks. His pocket jacks held when the opponent, who held queen-eight suited, flopped a flush draw and bricked out, giving him over 700,000 in chips.
Some notables moving onto Day 2 include Roland Israelashvili (235,000), Conrad Simpson (508,000), Ori Hasson (101,000), Kevin Martin (71,000) and Asi Moche (28,000).
A total of 896 entries were recorded, and many familiar faces took their shot but fell by the wayside throughout the day. The money bubble finally burst just as the night finished when Paul W Lee shoved his short-stack with ace-high against Alan Steinberg, who called with 8-2. Steinberg flopped a pair of twos, and unfortunately, Lee couldn't connect to advance to Day 2.
A total of 135 players will be returning for Day 2 at 12:00 p.m., with each guaranteed a payout of $4,009 and will be battling for the first-place prize of $364,589 and a WSOP gold bracelet.
The PokerNews live reporting team will have all of the updates throughout the tournament so keep it locked here to see who will become a WSOP champion.