It was a boisterous Day 1a of the £1,100 Main Event at the 2023 888poker Live London stop that saw plenty of players including many of the 888poker ambassadors take to the felt. A total of 114 entries were recorded during the opening of three flights with just 33 players advancing to Day 2 with a chip stack.
There was no question who the chip leader by the end of the day was as Jiaze Li dominated the last few levels of the night to accumulate a whopping stack of 375,500 chips. Li was quietly going about his business through much of the day but a massive three-way pot broke out where Li made a full house to eliminate one opponent and take a large chunk from the other.
Li continued his dominance by cracking the pocket aces of a fresh stack just moments later. To cap off the night, Li was faced with an all-in from Ajay Kejriwal who put the last of his chips in the middle without looking at his cards. Li made the call and found out that his nine-high was actually ahead. Both players made a pair but Li's was the better of the two, adding even more to his growing stack.
The next closest stack belongs to Steven Game who brought his "A-Game" to the tables today. Game mustered up a stack of 219,500 chips, good enough for second place on the day. Rounding out the top three stacks is Raymond Caabay with 179,500 which was rather impressive considering Caabay joined the field in the second half of the day.
There were plenty of 888poker ambassadors in the field for Day 1a but only one was able to make it through to Day 2. That honor was given to Lucia Navarro who scathed her way through on just one bullet en route to bagging up 46,000 chips. As for Ian Simpson, Josh Manley, Vivian Saliba, and Nick Eastwood, they will be forced to enter one of the latter flights or at the start of Day 2 if they wish to keep their hopes of a title still alive.
One of the feel-good stories of the tournament belonged to Adam Gilbert who won the opportunity for himself and his two friends, David Swain and Thomas Hayton, to enter the Main Event after winning a $5 Royal Squad tournament on 888poker. The three players had their entry fee, flight, and accommodations all paid for along with a VIP experience to a football game later this week. Unfortunately, none of the three players were able to find a stack in order to advance to Day 2.
The cards will be back in the air for Day 1b at 12:00 p.m. noon local time at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino and the field is expected to be at least twice the size. There will also be a turbo flight taking place at 6:00 p.m. local time where the levels will only be 20 minutes in length. The PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the tournament floor to bring you all of the live updates as the action unfolds.
