The partypoker LIVE MILLIONS festival at the Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham is unlike most other poker festivals, and not just because of the stunning guaranteed prize pool of £6m and £1m first-place payout for its flagship event, the £5,300 Main Event. Widely considered as the home of poker in the United Kingdom and one of the biggest cardrooms in Europe, the Dusk Till Dawn and online poker operator partypoker have created a unique hybrid between online and live poker.
Players have already qualified for the Main Event through a £500+50 Online Phase 1 on the partypoker platform, as well as via one of their live partners. This includes Dusk Till Dawn, but also other venues across Europe such as San Remo, Vienna and St. Vincent. All qualifiers then carry over their accumulated chips into a £5,300 Live Day 1 at the same venue, in which players can also buy in directly in order to receive 1,000,000 chips with an initial blind level of 2,500-5,000 and a running ante of 500.
Each Live Day 1 plays a total of ten hour-long levels, with the remaining players bagging up their chips into their respective Live Day 2. Registration remains open for another two levels into Day 2 until approximately 3.50 p.m. local time on Thursday, April 20th at Dusk Till Dawn. There have, however, already been qualifiers for Day 3 in St. Vincent, Vienna and San Remo, and those players will join the action at Dusk Till Dawn on Friday April 21st at 1pm local time when the entire remaining field plays to a finish across the weekend.
Here is the live Day 1 level structure:
Level
Duration
Small Blind
Big Blind
Ante
20
60
2,500
5,000
500
21
60
3,000
6,000
600
22
60
4,000
8,000
800
23
60
5,000
10,000
1,000
24
60
6,000
12,000
1,000
25
60
8,000
16,000
1,500
26
60
10,000
20,000
2,000
27
60
12,000
24,000
2,500
28
60
15,000
30,000
3,000
29
60
20,000
40,000
4,000
There have already been two Live Day 1s at the Dusk Till Dawn and the PokerNews live reporting team picks up the action in today's Day 1d which begins at 2 pm local time as well as tomorrow's Day 1e, before providing updates until a champion and new millionaire is crowned this upcoming Sunday.
We'll have all the action from kick off as many big name players look set to join the ever-growing Day 1 field.
An epic battle occurred in one hand which took a quarter of a blind level and involved both the chip leader and one of the most successful tournament players this year.
Luc Greenwood and Neal Murphy did battle across a hand we joined on the river but were reliably informed by tablemate Jonty Willis that both the turn and river were checked. The pot was already at 780,000 and the board showed when Greenwood bet 350,000 from early position. That was when Neal Murphy moved all-in for over 5 million chips and sat back, waiting for Greenwood to make a decision which looked painful.
Eventually, well into the final break of the day, Greenwood folded, leaving himself a playable stack with which to attack the final level. Murphy raked in a huge pot and to put it into context now has nearly two million more chips that Giovani Rizzo has taken through to Day 3 from the Vienna MILLIONS Day 2 just the other day. Incredible.
The partypokerLIVE MILLIONS festival at the Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham is unlike most other poker festivals, and not just because of the stunning guaranteed prize pool of £6m and £1m first-place payout for its flagship event, the £5,300 Main Event. Widely considered as the home of poker in the United Kingdom and one of the biggest cardrooms in Europe, the Dusk Till Dawn and online poker operator partypoker created a unique hybrid between online and live poker.
Players had already qualified for the Main Event through a £500+50 Online Phase 1 on the partypoker platform, as well as via one of their live partners. This includes Dusk Till Dawn, but also other venues across Europe such as San Remo, Vienna and St. Vincent. All qualifiers carried over their accumulated chips into a £5,300 Live Day 1 at the same venue, in which players could also buy in directly in order to receive 1,000,000 chips with an initial blind level of 2,500-5,000 and a running ante of 500.
Each Live Day 1 played a total of ten hour-long levels, with the remaining players bagging up their chips into their respective Live Day 2. Registration remains open for another two levels into Day 2 until approximately 3.50 p.m. local time on Thursday, April 20th at Dusk Till Dawn. There have, however, already been qualifiers for Day 3 in St. Vincent, Vienna and San Remo, and those players will join the action at Dusk Till Dawn on Friday, April 21st at 1pm local time when the entire remaining field plays to a finish across the weekend.
While players such as Neel Murthy, Kelly Hallaert, Jonty Willis, Paul Tedeschi and more excelled and ended the day with more than double the tournament average, others weren't so fortunate. partypoker ambassador Natalia Breviglieri lasted until she busted just before the midnight hour and will try again on Day 1e. Also left with that option are Adrian Mateos, Martin Kabrhel, Paul Nunes, Seth Webber, Steve Warburton and Dermot Blain.
After that plethora of action, yesterday saw a total of 197 players enter the mix live. A total of 97 players remained after playing 10 levels. Neel Murphy leads with a staggering 7,630,500 in chips. Another live day, Day 1e, awaits and PokerNews will again be on the floor to cover it all.