By Lisa Yiasemides
Six-Max Week is officially underway now after the first opening flights of the Warm Up events kicked off last night. The $1,050 Main event expected to draw some top poker talent and it did not disappoint.
With Day 1b in those events taking place this evening, there is another reason to get excited – the 6-Max Championship also starts tonight. The $3,200 Main has an incredible $3,000,000 guarantee and is not to be missed, with Mega Sats running today and tomorrow. More details on that can be found below.
$1,050 Warm Up ($500K GTD)
Last night, 123 entries were counted in the Main event, collecting $123,000 towards that huge guarantee. Ignacio Moron Chavero was first to fall and the Mexican decided he wasn’t going to be put off and jumped straight back in the game. He fared better this time but couldn’t go the distance, busting in 42nd place before the end of Level 18 had been reached.
In fact, it was bad news for many of the players, with a few at the top of the counts amassing huge amounts of chips throughout the course of the night. In the end, only 15 players made it through and Samuel Bernabeu Guilabert leads after a decisive performance saw him accumulate 3,081,088 chips, which will be worth 220 big blinds when Day 2 commences.
Alex Foxen also had a productive evening, the WPT Champion built a 1,696,821 stack and was the only other player to reach seven figures. He will return for Day 2 with 121 big blinds to play with.
Alex Foxen
Jean Rodrigo Mattos Losekann (868,555), Fausto Tantillo (849,962) and Nino Ullmann (783,556) made up the rest of the top five stacks, while partypoker’s Richard Dubini also fared well, and takes through 683,668, which was enough to secure 7th place in the counts. Fellow partypoker teammate Joao Simao (567,992) also progresses after ending the night in 10th place.
There were plenty of notable names that didn’t survive until the end. Jakob Miegel (16th) was last to leave before the whistle blew and the German joined Julien Perouse (22nd), Ben Jones (24th) and Dominik Nitsche (33rd) among others at the virtual rail.
Tonight, we do it all again before Day 2 gets underway at 6pm (BST) tomorrow, Monday, August 9. When they return, blinds will be 7,000-14,000 (1,750 ante).
$109 Mini Warm Up ($150K GTD)
Running alongside it was the Mini event and 423 registrations were counted, contributing $43,000 towards the prize pool. With blinds lasting 15 minutes (compared to 20-minute levels in the Main), it took about an hour less for the end of Level 18 to be reached. With a little over five hours of play in the books, 61 players made it through to the second stage of the competition.
There are some big stacks at the end of play, and Antonio Pedro (1,778,416) did enough to secure his place at the top of the counts. Dean Arsenie (1,539,870), Galim Beybit (1,410,999), Ivan Gacina (1,384,207) and João Paulo Gomides (1,369,240) were all close when play finished up and there were several more players who exceeded seven figures, a total of 16 built more than a million-chip stack, quite the contrast to the Main event. Blinds will return at 7,000-14,000 (1,750 big blind ante).
Other notable survivors include Tom Hall (769,611), Jerry Ödeen (703,046) and WPT Champion Christopher Pütz (555,119). There were plenty who didn’t make it too, among them were Jack Salter Chris Moorman and Lars Kamphues. All will have to re-enter to stay in the game if they haven’t done so already.
Tom Hall
$11 Micro Warm Up ($30K GTD)
Maya Mistry (2,316,175) climbed to the top by the end of 18 levels, accumulating more chips than anyone else in the 947-strong field. In the end, 126 made it through to the next stage of the competition and Gabriel Aires Aguiar (2,135,220) and Borislav Tonkov (2,065,169) also exceeded two million chips. Joe Quinn (1,939,209) and Ax De Castro (1,913,291) weren’t far behind and rounded out the top five.
Blinds will resume at 7,000-14,000 (1,750 big blind ante) when players return to fight it out in Day 2 tomorrow and with $9,470 put in the prize pool so far, there is plenty of value still to be had. Day 1b in this and all the Warm Up events starts at 7 pm tonight.
Tonight’s schedule
There are plenty of Mega Sats available to play ahead of tonight’s Day 1a 6-Max Championship event, they start from 1 pm and run every two hours, with feeders taking place on the hour in between.