The festival is now in full swing and this reporter even spotted some poker players on his plane from Malta to Dublin this afternoon. The first starting flight of the €700,000 Party Poker MILLIONS main event began and by 9pm, the number of runners had reached 43. This was expected to be the quietest starting leg, and over 200 entries are still needed from the remaining 3 flights in order to meet the guarantee!
Amongst today’s competitors is Belgian Bart Lybaert, the winner of the High Roller event at the Malta MILLIONS Festival and also Dutchman Michel Molenaar, who was runner up in the same event. Scotland’s Niall Farrell and David Dochertyalso started their MILLIONS’ campaigns today.
One player who is really looking forward to this event is Andy Black. The legendary Irish player describes the €3,000 buy-in event as the “Big One,” at least for Irish players, in an article he penned a few days ago for the Irish Poker Festival website. You can read the full article here.
Today also saw the conclusion of the Mystery Bounty Tournament, with a further 133 day 1b players adding to the 74 who participated in day 1a. The day two of this event took place soon after the conclusion of today’s heat, with a total prize pool of €40,365 plus €33,120 in bounties. There are 40 bounties available to win today, with 2 x €4,000 being the biggest ones. The chip leaders going into day 2 were Michal Zimani on 576k and Duane McDonnell on 570,00. They both had a lead of over 200k on the next closest challenger, Tarek Qunbar on 362k.
We’ll bring you the result of the Mystery Bounty in the morning. We’ll also publish the survivors from MILLIONS Day 1a. If you want to follow the event in close detail, there is a live clock on the Irish Poker Tour website, which can be found here.
Jonathan Raab
Irish Poker Festival Media Coordinator
