Another flight is in the books as Day 1b of the ￡1,100 Main Event at the 2023 888poker Live London festival has wrapped up after 12 levels of play. It was the largest of the three flights, attracting a total of 202 entries with just 62 players moving on to Day 2 tomorrow. One more flight, Day 1c turbo edition, is currently taking place and those results will be filtering in shortly.
There were four players who bagged up over 200,000 chips but none of them were able to catch the Day 1a leader Jiaze Li who finished with a whopping 375,500 chips. Leon Campbell emerged as the chip leader on Day 1b when the dust settled and will return to a stack of 231,500. He will be joined at the top by Paul Haycock (206,000), Jack McDermott (204,500), and Timothy Chung (203,000).
McDermott may be one of the most recognizable names near the top of the leaderboard as he often goes by "pieface" when streaming on Twitch and YouTube. With plenty of success playing in the online streets, McDermott is looking for his first major title on the live felt. A large five-figure payday in just a couple of days could go a long way to adding to the streamer's resume.
Meanwhile, Chung has already had plenty of success at live tournaments with over $1.2 million in career earnings thus far. Playing at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino brings back some good memories for Chung who captured the GUKPT Main Event title last year for his largest payday of over $250,000.
There were some more 888poker contingent in this flight as well, as some of the ambassadors jumped into the field after their VIP sit-and-go was completed in the early afternoon. However, for the likes of Ian Simpson, Vivian Saliba, and Ricardo Mateus, none of them were able to find a bag to advance to Day 2. Some are still fighting their way through the Day 1c flight in order to build a stack.
A full list of chip counts from Day 1b and Day 1c will be posted once the final flight wraps up later this evening. After the first two flights, a total of 316 entries have been recorded with 95 players advancing to Day 2 thus far. Late registration will remain open until the cards go back in the air with a starting stack worth 30,000 chips.
The action will resume at 12:00 p.m. local time with the blinds at 1,000/2,000 and a 2,000 big blind ante. The levels will also be increased to 60 minutes with a total of 10 levels on the schedule for Day 2. The money bubble is expected to burst after just a few levels but the full prize pool and payouts will be posted when available.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the tournament floor to bring you all of the live updates as the action unfold en route to bursting the money bubble and making its way toward the final table.
