It’s been a long day, full of action and fun. After it was all said and done, a total of 107 happy but tired players get to come back tomorrow for Day 2 of the MILLIONS North America Main Event. They will be joined by the 151 Day 1A qualifiers, for a total of 258 players on the felt tomorrow.
Today’s flight started off smoothly, as expected in a multi-day tournament of this level. The players adopted a prudent approach, mindful of the fact that there was no way of re-entering if all was lost. The variable degrees of skill and experience in this field also had an impact on the global approach of most players. One could spy a seasoned professional, an international player and/or a local champion at any given table.
From the start, the undisputed forerunner was Aleks Dimitrov, the 26-year-old Bulgarian player, with more than $300,000 or recorded live cash winnings to date. Even this early in the flight American Brandon Hall, whose cash winnings exceed $1,800,000, was hot on his heels. As the day wore on, both Dimitrov and Hall kept neck to neck and stayed on top of the leaderboard.
By the time the dinner break arrived, other players had caught up. Now Michael Farrow, from Ontario, Canada, who recently placed first at the $1,100 NLH WPT Fallsview Poker Classic in Niagara Falls, was the chip leader. Also in the top four with Farrow, Hall and Dimitrov, was William Givens IV, from Colorado. Givens has over $2,000,000 cash earnings and was crowned the champion of Event #45 ($1,000 NLHE) of the 45th World Series of Poker in Las Vegas in 2014.
In the late stages of this flight, Brandon Hall eventually gained the top spot on the leaderboard. Dimitrov had lost a little ground and was now fifth in chips. A new set of players had squeezed in between Dimitrov and Hall. Jonathan Dwek, from Toronto, Turkish player Orpen Kisacikoglu, and Canadian Michal Wywrot had managed to hoard enough chips to rank in the top five.
But, no matter the road taken, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the number of chips one drops in the bag. In total, 217,000,000 chips found their way into the bags, and the average stack was at 2.03 million. William Givens IV is the top bagger tonight with 6,285,000 chips. He is way out in front of the pack, his closest rival is Michal Wywrot who dropped 4,360,000, almost two million chips behind. Four other players managed to bag north of four million chips: Jonathan Dwek (4.33M), Sergio Aido Espina (4.2M), Tyler Smillie (4.15M), and Thomas Hall (4.02M). As a reminder, the top stack on Day 1A was Sandy Lam, with 6,840,000 chips.
So that’s a wrap for now, and the action will pick-up again tomorrow. Here are the dates and times of the remaining days of the MILLIONS North America Main Event:
- Day 2: Thursday May 23 at 12:00pm
- Day 3: Friday May 24 at 12:00pm
- Day 4: Saturday May 25 at 12:00pm
- Day 5: Sunday May 26 at 12:00pm
Day 1B chip leader – William Givens IV – 6,285,000
