Oleksii Kravchuk leads MILLIONS Russia Day 1a

The partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Russia kicked off yesterday, a much-awaited tournament series for poker pros from around the world. Running simultaneously with the Main Event at Casino Sochi are two Triton Poker High Roller tournaments, with Patrik Antonius in the lead of the first Triton High Roller.

Day 1a of the Main Event began yesterday and the RUB 300,000+18,000 (~$5,000) buy-in tournament attracted 201 entries on this first day of starting flights, with Day 1b and 1c still to be played. At the end of play on this first day, 106 players bagged up to progress to Day 2 of the tournament.

In the lead among these 106 players was Ukraine’s Oleksii Kravchuk, who has a decent lead over the rest. His 5,055,000 in chips is better than the next best’s 4,660,000 by quite a bit. The player has less than $300k in live earnings and a best live score of $78,186 that he earned for winning the Cyprus Deepstack Festival in 2014.

Kravchuk finished as the only player with a chip stack over 5 million and he managed this big lead because of a particular hand in the final level of the day where his opponent shoved all-in on the turn and Kravchuk was happy to make the call, having hit a set of jacks on the flop. This helped him chip-up towards the end.

Former tennis player Yevgeny Kafelnikov and partypoker LIVE MILLIONS winner Maria Lampropulos also joined on Day 1a, but they busted before they completed 8 levels of play. We’re expecting bigger names and much bigger fields on Day 1b today and Day 1c tomorrow, 9th August.

While a majority of the field was due to entries from local Russians, there were several countries in attendance at this tournament in Sochi. Keep reading GutshotMagazine.com for an update on what happens at Day 1b of the LIVE MILLION Russia Main Event.