The partypoker MILLIONS Online Main Event is under way and it is Canadian high roller Daniel Dvoress who bagged the biggest stack after Day 1a of the online poker tournament with a $5 million guarantee.
Dvores is a terrific poker player, so his lead is one worth talking up as he is going to be difficult to displace as the tournament continues. Dvoress advocates a strong approach to the mental game of poker and recently discussed his mindfulness mentor Elliot Roe’s A-Game Poker Masterclass on Run It Once.
With 591 entries on Day 1a, the MILLIONS Online Main Event is well on course to make the guarantee and it took over nine hours of poker to reduce the field to 87 players who made Day 2.
At the end of that time, it was the Canadian Daniel Dvoress who held the chip lead, bagging up 30.5 million chips, good for 218 big blinds when play resumes. Dvoress is followed fairly closely in the counts, however, with Hermogenes Gelonezi (27.7 million) and Hungarian Andras Nemeth (27.3 million). Plenty of other big names made it through to Day 2 of those 87 qualifiers, with Pedro Padilha (16,330,297), Espen Uhlen Jorstad (15,695,668), Simon Deadman (10,762,859), Christian Rudolph (9,544,082), Bruno Volkmann (9,453,291) and Alexandros Kolonias (9,127,932) all bagging up chips.
Twitch player Jaime Staples put down his $5,300 and made the Day 2 seat draw, which meant his first cash at that buy-in, with the Canadian going into the next day with a stack of 8,386,939. A couple of other well-known pros will have work to do after Team partypoker’s own Jason Koon (1.7 million) and Dzmitry Urbanovich (1.9m) needing to improve in the next day if they are to have any chance of going any further.
Numerous other Team partypoker players didn’t make the Day 2 draw, as Patrick Leonard, Isaac Haxton, John Duthie, Joni Jouhkimainen and Mikita Badziakouski all saw their chances evaporate outside of an expensive re-entry. Former MILLIONS champions Maria Lampropulos and Benjamin Chalot both lost out, albeit Chalot for twice the entry fees as the Argentinian due to re-entering.
Players who still have a re-entry left will have to be patient, as the next starting flight, Day 1b, doesn’t take place until the final day of this month on the coming date of February 28th. Players such as Sergi Reixach and partypoker’s Anatoly Filatov were both busted by Dvores, while others such as Dario Sammartino and Robert Heidorn both busted as the day was petering out.
It was Marco Baldini who busted on the bubble, however, Joao Simao had busted elsewhere to miss out on the money instead, pocket eights no good against Dominykas Mikolaitis’ pocket aces.
Here are all the top ten chipcounts from Day 1a of the MILLIONS Main Event.
partypoker MILLIONS Main Event Day 1a Chipcounts:
| Position | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
| 1st | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | 30,582,133 | 218 |
| 2nd | Hermogenes Gelonezi | Brazil | 27,798,834 | 199 |
| 3rd | Andras Nemeth | Hungary | 27,371,860 | 196 |
| 4th | Dominykas Mikolaitis | Lithuania | 24,489,173 | 175 |
| 5th | Arnaud Enselme | France | 18,339,430 | 131 |
| 6th | Simon Nielsen | Denmark | 18,072,924 | 129 |
| 7th | Joshua Hoesel | United States | 17,591,055 | 126 |
| 8th | Endrit Geci | United Kingdom | 17,498,394 | 125 |
| 9th | Pedro Padilha | Brazil | 16,330,297 | 117 |
| 10th | Espen Uhlen Jorstad | Norway | 15,695,668 | 112 |
