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35 of the 49 entrants have managed to survive Day 1 of the $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl. The biggest stack belongs to online crusher Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov, but Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz, Dan Colman and Daniel Negreanu are also amongst the top stacks.
The tournament kicked off at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas with a $15,000,000 prize pool (49 entries and $300,000 added by organizers) and a first place prize of $5,000,000.
On Day 1 the field played seven 75-minute levels and 14 players were eliminated. The first player to be eliminated was Big One champion Antonio Esfandiari, who didn't even make it through the first blind level (600-1,200-200 ante).
Esfandiari lost a big pot early on to Jason Mercier after after calling two streets with on an Ace high board with Kings (Mercier had A-Q), then he went into a preflop raising war against last years SHRB champion Brian Rast.
Esfandiari kicked things off with a raise of 3,000 from the button, Jake Schindler raised to 12,000 from the small blind and Rast cold 4bet to 36,000 from the big blind. Esfandiari raised to 76,000 then called all-in for roughly 195,000 after Rast shoved.
Esfandiari showed Q-Q and was flipping against Rast's A-K, unfortunately for him, the board ran out 9-4-J-8-K and he was eliminated.
At the same table, Jason Mercier also clashed with Doug "WCGRider" Polk, who recently called him a bad player on Twitter. Mercier won several big pots off Polk, who was also eliminated after running his K-5 into Andrew Robl's A-2.
The other eliminated players were Igor Kurganov, Isaac Haxton, Christoph Vogelsang, David Einhorn, Brandon Steven, Scott Seiver, Talal Shakerchi, Haralabos Voulgaris, John Morgan, Connor Drinan, Sam Soverel and Jason Les.
The chip leader going into Day 2 is last year's fourth place finisher, Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov, who bagged 1,129,500 chips, heaps more than Matt Berkey in second place.
Kuznetsov is an online cash game crusher who warmed up for the tournament by winning the €50,000 Super High Roller organized at the Aria for $748,446, defeating Anthony Gregg in heads-up.
The tournament will continue on Tuesday with another seven levels of action, check out the full chipcount below!
Timofey Kuznetsov - 1.129.500
Matt Berkey - 745.500
Fedor Holz - 736.500
Daniel Colman - 665.000
Daniel Negreanu - 653.500
Bill Perkins - 613.500
Phil Galfond - 578.500
Jason Mercier - 568.500
Dan Perper - 559.000
Justin Bonomo - 544.000
Brian Rast - 535.000
Phil Laak - 527.000
David Peters - 522.500
Bryn Kenney - 519.000
Ben Lamb - 504.500
Rainer Kempe - 445.000
Tom Marchese - 432.500
Phil Hellmuth - 405.000
Erik Seidel - 396.500
Andrew Robl - 382.500
Nick Petrangelo - 360.000
Tony Gregg - 342.500
Jake Schindler - 306.000
Kathy Lehne - 293.500
Dan Smith - 289.000
Keith Gipson - 282.000
Dan Shak - 235.500
Vitaliy Rizhkov - 202.500
Ben Tollerene - 187.500
Stephen Chidwick - 156.500
Dominik Nitsche - 136.500
Bobby Baldwin - 126.000
Cary Katz - 106.000
Pratyush Buddiga - 99.000
Byron Kaverman - 81.000