Mercier and Mateos Win Pots but Marsh is Table Captain

With two of the final five hands to play, a table stacked with chips took its time to play down to the end in dramatic style.

The penultimate hand of Day 1a saw Jason Mercier (pictured) three-bet pre-flop and get one caller to a flop of . On that flop, the world-famous Floridian bet 5,700 and took the pot down. He took no part in the final hand, so stacked up a whopping 92,700 at the close of play.

In the final hand of the day, Adrian Mateos clashed with Aslan Tcechoev and the latter bet 2,000 preflop and got a call from Mateos and the big blind player. The flop of saw all three players check, but Tcechoev bet 3,500 on the and only Mateos called. The river saw Mateos checked to, and he bet 8,300. Tcechoev folded and Mateos bagged up an impressive stack of 120,900.

Both Mercier and Mateos did well in the final level of the day, but Brad Marsh from Canada sealed up 173,200 chips and that's one of the biggest stacks in the room on a day where 229 players pitched up to play the PokerStars Championship Main Event here in The Bahamas.