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After eight levels of play, some massive stacks emerged with Mauricio Pais, Anton Johansson, and Philipp Zukernik collecting the most. Day 1a of the partypoker MILLIONS UK Main Event in the Dusk Till Dawn got underway at noon today with a total of 170 players entering and 87 advancing to the second day of play which will kick off on Friday.

Jiushuang Wang too had a great day, turning his million starting stack into 4.5 million, knocking out players left and right along the way. The biggest scalp came in a pot against partypoker PRO Roberto Romanello. While Romanello is, amongst other things, known for folding a full house in the WSOP Main Event a decade ago to the amazement of Mike Matusow, he wasn’t willing to repeat that feat here in Nottingham. He called with queens full of jacks, only to see Wang turn over queens full of kings on the river.

Wang is by no means the only one to multiply his stack. Such big names as Marvin Rettenmaier (3.8 million), Sam Grafton (2 million), November Niner Bryan Piccioli (3.1 million), and partypoker’s Joao Simao (3.5 million) all did well too.

Oliver Price was the first to head the tournament. Price’s surge came at the expense of bracelet winner Max Silver who suffered a bad beat with top-pair and top-kicker all in against Price’s flush draw on the turn. A heart on the river sealed Silver’s faith and catapulted Price to the role of chip leader. Price didn’t stay up top and lost a fair bit of chips back throughout the rest of the day, ending the eighth level with just over starting stack.

partypoker LIVE UK Millions Main Event Day 1a Chip Counts
Name Chips
1 Philipp Zukernik 5,875,000
2 Anton Johansson 5,525,000
3 Mauricio Ferreira Pais 5,510,000
4 Jiushuang Wang 4,510,000
5 Santiago Plante 3,895,000
6 Marvin Rettenmaier 3,805,000
7 Fredrik Andersson 3,755,000
8 Joao Simao 3,515,000
9 Robert Heidorn 3,510,000
10 Michael Sklenicka 3,505,000
11 Ryan Mandara 3,355,000
12 Nathan John Watson 3,240,000
13 Ondrej Drozd 3,230,000
14 Jakob Miegel 3,205,000
15 Bryan Piccioli 3,145,000
16 Marco Di Persio 3,005,000
17 George Demetriou 2,945,000
18 Javier Gomez 2,915,000
19 Per Anton Siden 2,905,000
20 Daniel Wilson 2,770,000
21 Yiannis Liperis 2,715,000
22 Felix Bleiker 2,690,000
23 Nicholas Romanello 2,410,000
24 Francisco Carreira 2,395,000
25 Emile Hijman 2,385,000
26 Tom Kunze 2,370,000
27 Niall Farrell 2,230,000
28 Daniel Ondejka 2,160,000
29 Adrian Mateos 2,115,000
30 Arunas Sapitavicius 2,105,000
31 Keith Lehr 2,045,000
32 Peter Chien 2,000,000
32 Sam Grafton 2,000,000
34 Thomas Knespl 1,965,000
35 Milad Langar 1,955,000
36 Martin Robert Mathis 1,915,000
37 Robin Hegele 1,890,000
38 Weijie Zheng 1,840,000
39 Luke Marsh 1,835,000
40 Michael Allmrodt 1,805,000
41 Carlos Chadha 1,795,000
42 James Sathiakiri 1,765,000
43 Lander Lijo 1,760,000
44 Kevin Rabichow 1,735,000
44 Kristen Bicknell 1,735,000
46 Ivan Gabrieli 1,630,000
47 Ondrej Franta 1,620,000
48 John Mooney 1,585,000
49 Steven Warburton 1,475,000
49 Kristoffer Hansson 1,475,000
51 Usman Ulhaq 1,455,000
52 Joel Isla Gonzalo 1,410,000
52 Manuel Ruivo 1,410,000
54 Anatoly Filatov 1,400,000
55 Waheed Ashraf 1,375,000
56 Bartlomiej Machon 1,275,000
57 James Romero 1,260,000
58 Jack Hardcastle 1,250,000
59 Lawrence Bayley 1,245,000
60 Steven Van Zadelhoff 1,240,000
61 Mudasser Hussain 1,205,000
62 David Taborsky 1,200,000
63 Adriano Luzzi 1,190,000
64 Joep Raemaekers 1,185,000
65 Trevor Reardon 1,125,000
66 Luigi Knoppers 1,100,000
67 Oliver Price 1,080,000
68 Lukas Soucek 1,075,000
69 Alex Keating 1,070,000
70 Nathan Jones 1,000,000
71 Andrew Salami 910,000
72 Petr Hlavacek 880,000
73 Robert Bickley 840,000
74 Eduard Scharf 835,000
75 Josef Gulas 825,000
76 Kristoffer Rasmussen 710,000
77 Thomas Middleton 635,000
78 Hossein Ensan 600,000
79 Andrei Lucian Boghean 590,000
80 Duff Charette 575,000
81 Florian Lohnert 550,000
82 Tomas Jozonis 515,000
82 Mustapha Kanit 515,000
84 Alexandros Kolonias 460,000
84 Andrej Desset 460,000
86 Alexandr Merzhvinskiy 340,000
87 Basharat Mahmood 155,000

Day 2 sees the players return to action with blinds at 15,000 and 30,000. But before the 87 Day 1a survivors continue their quest for gold, first Day 1b will be played out on Thursday, January 9th. Players that busted on Day 1a today have another shot by handing over another $10,300 in exchange for a fresh 1,000,000 starting stack. Tomorrow’s stream on PokerGO will be a $100/$200 Pot Limit Omaha headlined by Rob Yong, Sam Trickett, Luke Schwartz, and Leon Tsoukernik and that stream gets underway wat 1:30pm ET. New to PokerGO? Subscribe right now.

Joao Simao, Marvin Rettenmaier