The first-ever Triton Invitational to be held in Asia is now also the biggest on record, after 120 players across 60 pairings entered the $200,000 event.
The field at the LES A Casino in Jeju was split between VIPs and pros for Day 1, and after 10 levels of play, the field had ticked up to 155 total entries, with registration open until the start of Day 2.
The prizepool has already hit $31 million, and it's only going to get bigger on Sunday.
Phil Ivey was the first player eliminated after his aces were cracked by Gytis Lazauninkas, who flopped a set of nines. That sent Ivey to the rebuy desk for a $200K re-entry.
Ivey navigated his way to the end of Day 1 in 77th place, with a stack of 237,000 (40bb).
Mateos looking to go back-to-back
The top 10 on the leaderboard at the end of the day was evenly split between five VIPs and five pros. The UK's Jules Dickerson bagged the biggest stack, followed by Alejandro Lococo. High-stakes crushers Stephen Chidwick, Ike Haxton and Adrian Mateos are bunched together with stacks of over 170 big blinds each.
Mateos won the last Triton Invitational for $6,370,000 in Montenegro last May, and that remains the biggest score in a career that's seen him net $67,892,885 over the past 14 years. No one has ever won two Invitationals.
Ethan 'Rampage' Yau also bagged a top-ten stack on his birthday.
After losing $10 million last night, Patrik Antonius has a chance of clawing a few million back. He also survived Day 1, bagging 229,000.
94 players remain, with more set to join the field before the start of Day 2 tomorrow.
In the meantime, you can watch all of the Day 1 action below.
$200K Triton Jeju Invitational top 10 stacks
- Jules Dickerson (UK): 1,431,000
- Alejandro Lococo (Argentina): 1,173,000
- Winfred Yu (Hong Kong): 1,118,000
- Stephen Chidwick (UK): 1,076,000
- Isaac Haxton (USA): 1,040,000
- Adrian Mateos (Spain): 1,025,000
- Musk Thomas (China): 1,025,000
- Klemens Roiter (Austria): 1,018,000
- Ethan Yau (USA): 908,000
- Tom Fuchs (Germany): 900,000
