Big Names Fall on First Name of the 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Grand Final Barcelona
It was a very promising start to the highlight of the record-setting 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Grand Final festival at the Casino Barcelona, as a total of 338 entries of €10,300 each entered the first of four starting days of the Main Event, which comes with a stunning guaranteed prize pool of €10,000,000. With the new structure fast at the start and deep in the later stages, it was no surprise that the 12 levels of 45 minutes each whittled down that field to just 93 hopefuls, and a close race for the chip lead took place in the last half an hour.
Chris Brammer and Laszlo Bujtas seemed to poised for the overnight spotlight after shooting up to more than eight times the starting stack, but ultimately they were passed by Michel Dattani and Taylor Black. Dattani sent Bryn Kenney to the rail in the third-last hand of the night when he rivered the nut straight with king-jack and Kenney got it in with ten-nine for two pair. Black won a massive three-way all in with flopped bottom set of deuces, raking in the stacks of Stefan Schillhabel (pocket kings for an overpair) and Abdelhadi Kondah (ace-jack for top pair top kicker). Dattani bagged up 9.415 million with Black close behind on 8.26 million, Bujtzas is in third place with 8.26 million.
Other big stacks through to Day 2 out of the first flight include Markus Durnegger (7.495 million), 2017 WSOP Main Event 8th place finisher Jack Sinclair (7.5 million), Chris Brammer (7.16 million), Ben Heath (6.615 million), Marton Czuczor (6.23 million), Claas Segebrecht (6 million), Paul Vas Nunes (5.88 million), Govert Metaal (5.505 million) and Damian Salas (4.825 million).
For team partypoker it was a day with mixed success on the felt. Only team online's Josip Simunic (4.385 million), and the sponsored pros Johnny Lodden (4.105 million), Anatoly Filatov (1.65 million) and Kristen Bicknell (1.22 million) advanced while Joao Simao fired two bullets without bagging up. His wife Luiza, who represents team online and team ladies, was also felted along with Marcel Luske, partypoker chairman Mike Sexton, Richard Dubini, Roberto Romanello and Dzmitry Urbanovich.
Urbanovich ran out of chips in the last hand of the night when his three-bet jam with pocket nines was no good against the pocket queens of Aymon Hata. Other notables that entered without success include Max Silver, Dietrich Fast, Niall Farrell, Alessio Isaia, Steven van Zadelhoff, MILLIONS Russia Main Event champion Aleksandr Gofman, Steve O'Dwyer and €25,500 Super High Roller II champion Davidi Kitai.
Most of those big names will very likely take another shot at bagging a decent stack in the ongoing Day 1b, and the registration for that flight will remain open until the start of level 10 at approximately 00:30 a.m. local time. The PokerNews team will provide feature articles for Day 1b, while the live coverage then kicks off on tomorrow's Day 1c and Day 1d.