Mikhail Vilkov Leads Day 1a, Dietrich Fast Bagged Big
Day 1a of the €10,300 Main Event at the 2019 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Europe is in the books at the King's Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. A total of 165 players registered for the tournament today and 101 of them made it through to the second day. Mikhail Vilkov bagged one of the biggest stacks. He improved his 1,000,000 stack to an impressive 4,850,000 after eight hours of play. Other notable players that ended near the top of the chip counts are Dietrich Fast (4,255,000) and Daniel Rezaei (3,860,000).
Vilkov collected chips throughout the day and he even had 5,000,000 in front of him at one point. He closed out the day by finishing just a little bit under the five million chip mark. Fast busted Jonas Lauck in the last level of the day to give his stack a boost to 2,5 million. He never looked back from that moment and finished the day by winning another 1,7 million chips of the other players at his table.
Day 1a Action
The day started in Rozvadov with a little over 50 players on the clock and that number quickly grew. The clock showed 165 players at the end of the first starting day. Eight one-hour levels were played and 101 players found a bag at the end of the day. Late registration is still open until the end of the second level on Day 2 and plenty of entries will still be made on Day 1b of the tournament to reach that €5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool.
Plenty of notables found a bag at the end of the first day. Among them are Patrick Mahoney (3,280,000), Niall Farrell (3,215,000), David Hu (3,070,000), Sam Grafton (2,460,000), Lawrence Bayley (1,800,000), Julian Thomas (1,740,000), Gianluca Speranza (1,245,000), and Andrea Ricci (765,000) all made it through to Day 2. Another familiar face that made it to the second day is partypoker Pro Joao Simao. He added 825,000 to his starting stack of 1,000,000 to end the day just under 2 million with 1,825,000.
Plenty more partypoker Pros showed up on Day 1a of the €10,300 but only Simao made it through to Day 2. The ones that gave it a shot but failed to find a bag were Jeff Gross of Team Online and Josip Simunic. Simunic had a short day when he sat down from the start. He wasn't able to get anything going and lost a bunch of his stack with pocket tens against ace-queen. He busted out only minutes later with ace-queen against pocket nines and he failed to win both flips.
Another member of the partypoker team that entered the day was Philipp Gruissem. He battled it out at a tough table with the likes of Markus Durnegger and Alex Keating. Both of them failed to make it to Day 2. Gruissem also battled a lot with Jack Sinclair who was seated at the same table. Sinclair lasted longer in the fight then Gruissem did when Gruissem busted right before the end of the day and Sinclair busted out only 15 minutes later.
Plenty of others gave it a shot but didn't make it to the second day. Steve Warburton, Mateusz Moolhuizen, Vojtech Ruzicka, Bryan Piccioli, Ben Heath, Triton 100K Super High Roller champion Orpen Kisacikoglu, and Aymon Hata all were eliminated throughout the day. They do still have the option to reenter the tournament through Day 1b or they can register on Day 2 in the first two one-hour levels of the day.
Day 1b will kick-off at noon on Thursday, August 15. The recipe is the exact same as today with eight one-hour levels and a fifteen-minute break after every two levels. The day will be done at approximately 8:45 p.m. local time and that will give the players enough rest to battle it out for the money on a combined Day 2.
Make sure to stay tuned to PokerNews to follow the rest of the coverage of the 2019 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Europe in Rozvadov.