Darren Elias Holds the Day 1 Chip Lead of the $10,300 High Roller
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The opening day has wrapped up for the partypoker MILLIONS North America inside the Playground Poker Club. The $10,300 High Roller has concluded with just 26 players finding a bag. Darren Elias emerged as the chip leader with an impressive 6,200,000 and will surely be the man to beat when Day 2 begins.
Elias has a well-documented resume to back up his Day 1 performance. The New Jersey native has amassed over $5.5 million in career earnings with his biggest win coming at the WPT Borgata in 2014 for $843,744. Elias will be looking to add to his totals but will have some stiff company to get through.
Marc MacDonnell is not sitting too far in the distance, bagging up 6,135,000. MacDonnell held the chip lead for the better part of the day but a late rally by Elias barely surpassed him. Rounding out the top three is David Eldridge (6,000,000) who was the only other player to bag at least six million chips.
Some other notables to find a bag at the end of the day include partypoker Sponsored Pro Kristen Bicknell (1,285,000), Parker Talbot (2,850,000), Chris Moorman (5,280,000), Victor Ramdin (5,900,000), Anthony Zinno (3,190,000), and Martin Jacobson (870,000). There was no question there would be a lot of familiar faces in the field today, but unfortunately, not all of them would make it through the day unscaved. Some of the big names to fall out of contention were partypoker Sponsored Pro Roberto Romanello, partypoker Ambassador Joao Simao, Alex Foxen, Brian Yoon, and Jonathan Duhamel.
When the action got underway at 12:00 PM local time, there were just 11 players in their seats. That number quickly grew and by the first break the number of entries was up to over 40. Players were only given the option to re-enter once, so they were forced to tread lightly after whipping through their first bullet. By the time late registration closed, a total of 80 entries were tallied, bringing the prizepool to $970,000. There will be 10 players able to walk away with some cash in their pockets and the winner will take home a cool $300,000.
The remaining 26 players will return at 12:00 PM on Sunday, April 22 for Day 2 of the tournament. The action will start on level 13 with the blinds at 35,000/70,000 and a button ante of 70,000. The action will continue throughout the day with 40-minute levels and will play until a winner is crowned.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be on the tournament floor to bring you all of the live updates.