Will The Mini Main Event's Attendance Top 10,000 Entrants?
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Today sees Day 1b of Event #75: $1,000 Mini Main Event No-Limit Hold'em start at 10 a.m. local time here at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. Players enter the battle with starting stacks of 60,000 chips and the common goal to survive 22 levels, each spanning 30 minutes. Breaks, 20 minutes in length, will take place every four levels of play, and a 75-minute dinner break will be at around 7 p.m. after Level 16.
Late registration is available until the start of Level 13, at about 5 p.m. Players who busted out of Day 1a can fire again in this flight, but reentry to the same flight is not allowed.
Day 2 on Tuesday, July 1, starting at 11 a.m., will combine survivors of the first two starting flights and run until only five players remain. Those five individuals will come back on Wednesday, July 2, to play it down to a winner.
Day 1a ran on June 29 and saw 4,077 players pile into the event, but only 318 of them made it through to Day 2. Canada's Duane Fernandez (2,670,000) finished at the top of the chip counts, closely followed by Brandon Morisson (2,500,000), and Liran Betito (2,480,000).
Players reached the money on Day 1a and nearly 300 left with a cash between $800 and $2,299. The same will happen today, with approximately 15 percent of the total field getting paid.
Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Duane Fernandez | Canada | 2,670,000 | 67 |
| 2 | Brandon Morisson | United States | 2,500,000 | 63 |
| 3 | Liran Betito | Israel | 2,480,000 | 62 |
| 4 | Kevin Naegelan | France | 2,410,000 | 60 |
| 5 | Pedro Madeira | Brazil | 2,270,000 | 57 |
| 6 | Ari Oxman | United States | 2,185,000 | 55 |
| 7 | Robbie Bull | United Kingdom | 2,155,000 | 54 |
| 8 | Gregory Fournier | France | 2,000,000 | 50 |
| 9 | Zhen Chen | China | 1,820,000 | 46 |
| 10 | Dmitrii Tammeoia | Russia | 1,775,000 | 44 |
Anyone wanting to break into the current top ten needs to turn their 60,000 starting stack into at least 1,775,000, perhaps more, because a massive Day 1b field is expected. Last year's Mini Main Event only had a solitary Day 1, which saw 6,076 players buy in. If a similarly-sized field jumps into Day 1b, we will see a field of over 10,000 players battling it out in Las Vegas.
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