Shaun Deeb, Upeshka De Silva also finish with top-five stacks as $10m guaranteed Main Event kicks off
The centerpiece event of the World Poker Tour World Online Championships kicked off Sunday, with plenty of big names making it to the leaderboard at the end of Day 1a.
The first of two Day 1 flights played out on partypoker, as WPT World Online Championships Event #8: $10,300 Main Event kicked off. The $10 million guaranteed event saw 521 entries whittle down to 80 players.
Among those 80 names, Slovenia's Blaz Zerjav finished Day 1a at the top of the chip counts, ending the day with just over 4.4 million chips. Other top players sitting near the top of the Day 1a list include Dominik Panka (2,834,144), Shaun Deeb (2,744,492), and Upeshka De Silva (2,687,929).
The second of the pair of Day 1 flights commences Sunday, Sept. 13, in the form of Day 1b. All surviving players from the Day 1a and 1b flights then come back Sept. 14 for Day 2 and play a dozen 45-minute levels.
Day 2 plays down to the final table, and the nine players filling out those spots come back Sept. 16 and play down to a champion. The 521 entries from Day 1a pushed the prize pool more than halfway toward the $10 million guarantee.
The winner of Event #8 is assured at least a $1,840,750 payout, and the runner-up finisher is also guaranteed a six-figure payday of at least $1,311,050.
Day 1a recap
Event #8: $10,300 Main Event plays as the feature event from the ongoing WPT World Online Championships. The online series, presented on partypoker, has already added several new names to the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup.
The winner of the Main Event will take home the biggest payout across all events in the online series. Plenty of big names came out for Day 1a, which resulted in a tough landscape for the 521 entries that registred for the $10,300 buy-in tournament.
Zerjav, Panka, Deeb, Antonio Pedro (2,715,316), and De Silva ended Day 1a in the top five chip leaderboard spots. Other top contenders coming from the Day 1a flight include Dylan Linde (1,953,957), high-stakes tournament fixture Ole Schemion (1,705,519) out of Germany, and former WSOP Europe Main Event winner Jack Sinclair (1,223,441).
Two members of Team partypoker made it through to advance to Day 2, with Philipp Gruissem (1,280,141) and Dzmitry Urbanovich (755,512) ending the flight on the plus side of the chip counts.
Other notable players making it through Day 1a include Steve O'Dwyer (1,095,392), Kahle Burns (947,872), former WSOP Main Event champion Ryan Riess (400,344), and former partypoker MILLIONS Online winner Jon Van Fleet (254,606).
The Day 1b flight is scheduled for Sept. 13, and like Day 1a allows one re-entry per player. The WPT World Online Championships play out through the rest of September, with $100 million guaranteed across the series.
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