Chance Kornuth Leads the Day 1A Survivors in the $25,500 MILLIONS World Event
It was a quiet opening day at the 2018 Caribbean Poker Party that saw only one event on the schedule. That event happened to be the $25,500 MILLIONS World that boasts a $10 million guaranteed prizepool and attracted some of the biggest names in poker.
A day in which 77 players took to the felt, Chance Kornuth came out on top of the 49 players remaining after winding up with 3,840,000 chips. Kornuth tangled with Fedor Holz multiple times on the day and found himself on the winning side for many of the big pots. Their stacked table was moved to the live stream for the last two levels where Kornuth continued to accumulate chips.
Kornuth has been a force to be reckoned with in the live poker scene, amassing nearly $6 million in career tournament earnings. His largest career cash was for $641,000 but he will be looking to change that this week with all of the money up for grabs. Kornuth has also taken the online world as of late, and he has been giving his fans an insight into his style of play. The American has been streaming his online poker sessions on the ever-popular Twitch site and he's been racking up the results there, so it is no wonder he is finding success on the felt at the CPP as well.
The day began a few minutes late as most high roller tournaments do, but the action soon got under way with around 20 players taking their seats. Each player started with 1,000,000 in chips which translated to 200 big blinds in the opening level. It was standard to not see many chips flying around in the first couple of levels but it was partypoker pro Isaac Haxton who took the early lead heading into the first break.
Haxton lost a big pot with pocket kings against ace-king and pocket queens but still managed to coast through most of the day to bag up 3,660,000 chips, good enough for second on the leaderboard. Andreas Eiler also had a strong day picking up the majority of his chips with pocket aces against the pocket nines of Matthias Eibinger. Eiler finished the day with 3,645,000 chips which was good enough to round out the top three.
It should be considered a successful day for the partypoker team on the felt as eight of their members found a bag to move on to Day 2. Haxton led the way followed by Jason Koon (2,695,000), Joao Simao (2,275,000), Barny Boatman (2,075,000), Anatoly Filatov (1,650,000), Kristen Bicknell (1,570,000), Philipp Gruissem (1,130,000) and Fedor Holz (680,000).
Some of those that will be forced to try their luck again on Day 1B will be Martin Jacobson, Seth Davies, Brian Hastings and the Greenwood brothers as they were all eliminated on Day 1A.
The action will continue Saturday at 12 p.m. local time with Day 1B that should be just as exciting with an even bigger field. The PokerNews live reporting team will be on site again to bring you overall tournament coverage of the events going on.