Online Legend Viktor Blom Tops the Counts After Day 1a
The 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany €5,300 Main Event is off to a good start to meet the guaranteed prize pool of €5,000,000. after the first of four starting days at the King's Casino in Rozvadov attracted a field of 209 entries. Of those, only 70 made it through to Day 2 and it was no other than Viktor Blom that ended up with the most chips.
After the Swedish online high stakes legend busted out in 15th place for €11,000 in the €2,700 Warm Up, Blom jumped right into the action of the Main Event and doubled in one of the first hands after sitting down when flopping a straight. Soon after Blom sent Dermot Blain to the rail in a big clash with aces versus kings and knocked out another player with aces versus jacks before half time. Blom didn't stop there just yet, as another pair of aces gave him a set and an opponent had an inferior set of treys to send over his stack to the Swede.
Despite losing quite some chips in the last levels of the night, Blom topped the counts after bagging up 8.805 million. His nearest follower is Viliyan Petleshkov with 7.7 million and Christopher Frank made it through with 6.98 million. Frank claimed the stack of partypoker ambassador Joao Simao when his pocket kings held up versus ace-king. Two partypoker sponsored players made it through in team online's Josip Simunic (4.09 million) and ambassador Patrick Leonard (2.0 million), while Johnny Lodden, Marcel Luske and Dzmitry Urbanovich were all felted throughout the 12 levels of 40 minutes each.
Other big stacks and notables that won't need to re-enter the competition include Artur Wasek (5,915 million), Jessica Pilkington (5.66 million), 2017 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event runner-up Gianluca Speranza (5.28 million), Christian Christner (5.19 million), Koray Aldemir (5.025 million), Sander van Wesemael (4.72 million), David Urban (4.205 million), four time WSOP bracelet winner Dominik Nitsche (3.225 million) and Sam Cohen (2.87 million).
The partypoker sponsored pro Urbanovich was down to just four big blinds when he got it in with nine-tree off suit and picked up two callers. Abdullah Al-Emadi and Arsenii Karmatckii checked down a king-high board and Al-Emadi won the pot with pocket queens.
Other big names to fall on Day 1a included Mike Leah, Pierre Neuville, Michael Tureniec, Ole Schemion, Adrian Mateos, James Akenhead, Steve O'Dwyer and Vladimir Troyanovskiy. Most of them are already in action in the second flight of the day that is scheduled to finish around 2 a.m. local time and the PokerNews live reporting team will provide updates throughout the early morning hours.