Sergey Lavrikov Leads the Way End Day 1a Main Event
![[user252447]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
The 2017 PokerStars Festival Sochi continued today with Day 1a of the 30,000,000 RUB Main Event.
The first of three starting flights saw cards in the air at 12 p.m. for twelve 45-minute levels and ended up attracting an impressive 276 entries with 94 players bagging up chips for Day 2.
Sergey Lavrikov ended the end as overall chip leader with 286,800 while Alexander Shlyakhov finished second on 272,900 and Rauta Dorin is third with 229,000.
There were a few notables in the tournament including Philipp Salewski who took home �111,674 earlier this year for winning the Sunday Million Live topping a field of 5,045.
At the last major event held at the Sochi Casino and Resort Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy took third place for $400,000 and he too played today. Merzhvinskiy has assorted cashes from Belarus and Montenegro, as well as 18th place in the PokerStars National Championship Sochi from May this year.
The best known player though was surely Yuri Gulyy. With over $900,000 in lifetime earnings including a 2nd in the FPS High Roller at the EPT 11 Grand Final for $121,995 and numerous EPT wins in Copenhagen and London, deep Main Event runs in Deauville, Malta, Madrid, Prague and Monte Carlo Gulyy is a force to be reckoned with at the tables.
Gulyy got a good start and seemed to keep the aggression up and was cruising along at the 100,000 chip mark until it all went wrong towards the end of the day when he was reduced to a ten big blind stack and busted in level 12.
Today though belonged to the Russians and it is a tribute to the pull of the festival in such an amazing venue and the Russian��s deep love of poker that the numbers were so impressive which bodes well for the rest of the Festival and the future of live poker in Russia.
Tomorrow, Friday 20th October sees another packed day of poker with Day 1b of the Main Event starting at 12 p.m Another High Roller Satellite at 4 p.m. The Sochi Poker Cup at 6 p.m. and the last Day 1c of the Main Event at 9:30 p.m.
Friday is also the night of the PokerStars Players Party where the assembled players have a chance to relax and celebrate together and the 2017 Sochi Players Party is shaping up to be a special.
The party is also being co-hosted by PokerStars and Playboy and will see an appearance from Alekseev, a Ukranian singer who made the semi-final of Ukraine��s "Voice Of The Country�� and is a huge star in Russia. His song, ��Drunken Sun�� topped the charts and has over 30 million views on YouTube.
Coverage of the Main Event continues here tomorrow exclusive to PokerNews.