By Lisa Yiasemides
The Mix-Max Championship events are just around the corner, with Day 1a kicking off Event #06: Mix Max Championship tonight! That means last night saw Mix-Max week officially get off the mark with three Warm Up events taking place over on partypoker.com.
$1,050 Mix-Max Warm Up ($500K GTD)
The three tournaments all started at 7 pm (BST) and the highest buy-in event collected 80 entries by the time late registration closed about two and a half hours into play, at the end of Level 9. The $1K buy-in isn’t going to appeal to everyone’s limits, so it was unsurprising to see a host of regulars in the player list.
Some of them were among the early casualties, with Bertil Andreas Samuelsson the first to fall and Sylvain Loosli right behind him. Both players jumped back in, but both also busted before play paused at the end of Level 18. Loosli came closest, making it as far as 17th place, just a few spots away from the 11 paid.
Kenny Hallaert, yesterday’s $530 Mix-Max Knockout winner Sergei Denisov, Nick Yunis, Dominik Nitsche, Arsenii Karmatckii and Ilya Anatski all exited outside of the money. Anatski placed 14th, just a couple of spots away from progressing to Day 2 but Daniel Charlton (12th) was the last player to go before the clock paused for the evening.
Of the 11 who go through, Canada’s Chun Fai Au takes the biggest stack with them, collecting 1,690,260, quite some margin ahead of second-place finisher Barry Hutter (983,246). Pascal Hartmann (971,690), Dan Shak (784,335) and Brock Wilson (780,898) took up the rest of the top five places.
Barry Hutter
The big names didn’t end there, with Tomas Fara (664,960), Julien Perouse (606,000) and Ivan Emanuely (592,966) among those still in the mix. Alexandru Papazian (163,063) finished up with the smallest number of chips and will have just 11.5 big blinds when play resumes with levels of 7,000/14,000 (1,750 ante) at 7 pm tomorrow, Sunday, August 23.
$109 Mini Mix-Max Warm Up ($150K GTD)
He may have bubbled the Main event, but Daniel Charlton was on fire in the Mini, amassing 2,816,085 chips. That was not only good for the chip lead but he ended up 650,000 ahead of Robin Ylitalo (2,163,748) in second. Firoz ‘Mohammed’ Mangroe (1,741,097) had a productive evening too, taking third place, while Felicia Daniliuc (1,434,184) and Sebastian Hitz (1,425,036) took fourth and fifth places.
The top five stacks are the only players among the 49 survivors who will return with more than 100 big blinds in play. Despite that, there are still some tough opponents in the running, with Jessica Teusl (936,422) and Victor Begara (723,846) a couple of the other notables who made it through.
Team partypoker Travis Darroch was the last player to leave before the end of level 18 had been reached, exiting in 50th place. He joined the remainder of the 491 starters at the sidelines who will need to re-enter tomorrow or in Sunday’s turbo Day 1c flight if they want to stay in the running.
$11 Micro Mix-Max Warm Up ($30K GTD)
The Micro event drew a crowd of 953 to the virtual tables, collecting almost a third of the $30,000 guarantee with two more Day 1 flights still to go.
A total of 120 players advanced to the second and final day, and there was serious competition at the top of the chip counts. In the end, Stephen Rowe (2,522,216) climbed highest after bagging a couple of hundred thousand more than Vadim Mukhutidnov (2,328,594) in second.
Daniel Solich (2,238,901), Gevorg Papoyan (2,058,523) and Diego Cortazzo (1,990,067) all had fruitful evenings, doing enough to get a spot in the top five. The Day 2 standings could all still change, however, with Days 1b and 1c still to play out tonight and tomorrow.
Tonight’s schedule
Mega Sats for Event #06: Mix-Max Championships are running all day today. No matter which of the three buy-in levels you would like to play, you can try to qualify from 1 pm (BST), with Meg Sats running every two hours and feeders taking place an hour before each one.
There are plenty of seats added to some of your favourite comps too. Below is a handful of tournaments that you can win a WPT seat in. To find out the full selection of tournaments, search for “WPT Seat Added” in the Tournament Lobby over on partypoker.com.
