Watson Among Top Stacks After Day 1 of PLO Main Event
After an action-packed seven hours, Day 1 of WCOOP-73-H: $10,300 PLO [6-Max, Main Event] wrapped up with 38 of the 123 entries advancing.
The top chip count belongs to "hotmark777," though the'll be looking for a deep run to make up for the maximum allowance of three bullets fired. They finished with 1,689,323, just a hair above the 1,689,203 "bagged" by "Us_Alex." "Kukenmuser" (1,491,159), Mike "SirWatts" Watson (1,440,771) and "ZhipOHoy" (1,356,471).
Watson, of course, is the most notable and well-known of those names. One of the best players in the history of online poker tournaments, Watson is a two-time WCOOP winner, with one of those coming in a High event, as this one is. With $12 million in live cashes, he's one of the names to watch going forward.
Another former high-stakes 8-game champ, Konstantin "krakukra" Maslak also wound up with a big stack of 1.2 million. Maslak won a huge three-way all in with aces late, making the nut flush on the river after he got sucked out on the turn, to put himself in good position going to Day 3.
Of course, plenty of top PLO cash regs are also in the hunt, such as Laszlo "omaha4rollz" Bujtas, and Galfond Challenge villains Ioannis "ActionFreak" Kontonatsios and "Venividi1993."
Registration remains open until a bit before the start of Day 2, so the guarantee of $1.25 million appears almost certain to be met. A few players will be frozen out due to using all their shells on Day 1, though, including Richard "raconteur" Gryko, Jens "Jeans89" Kyllonen, Joni "bustoville" Jouhkimainen, and Yuri "theNERDguy" Dzivielevski.
Day 2 gets rolling at 1:10 p.m. EDT on Monday. Come back to PokerNews for more live coverage.