Jeffrey Hakim Bags Lead in Monte Carlo Main Event Day 1

Day 1A of the inaugural PokerStars Championship Monte Carlo €5,300 Main Event drew 235 entrants and following a full day of action 107 advance on to Day 2 following a well-deserved day off. Leading the charge is Jeffrey Hakim with 305,300 – about 4.5 times the average stack.

Forming the chase pack in Stefan Shillhabel with 203,000 and is one of four Germans in the top ten counts – Maing Loeser, Pascal Hartman and Ole Schemion – who happened to already win an event and cash in the €100,000 Super High Roller earlier in the day.

Hakim made a late surge in the day to extend his lead six-figures. He flopped quads against an opponent flush draw who decided to take it all the way. That pot put Hakiom over the 300,000-mark.

Only three PokerStars Team Pros advanced to Day 2: Celina Lin, Jason Mercier and Fatima Moreira de Melo. Nick Petrangelo, Dan Smith, Charlie Carrel, Daniel Dvoress and Ranier Kempe all return but with an average stack. 

Peter Chan will have to live the “chip and a chair” dream as the shortest advancing stack. The good news is that he actually has four chips for his Day 2 1,700 stack with the blinds at 500/1,000.

Day 1B gets cards in the air at noon, with a presumably larger flight – hoping to beat 2016’s mark of 1,098 players when Jan Bendik won $1.09 million.

Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Jeffrey Hakim – 305,300
2. Stefan Schillhabel – 203,000
3. Manig Loeser – 195,700
4. Michel Pereira Marques – 168,900
5. Igor Yaroshevskyy – 156,700
6. Pascal Hartman – 152,100
7. Ole Schemion – 144,900
8. Dmytro Shuvanov – 136,100
9. Salvatore Bianco – 127,900
10. Celina Lin – 125,500