A total of 316 entries filled up the tables at the PokerStars Live poker room at the Okada Manila to participate in the Manila Megastack 24 Main Event, which came with a PHP 45,000 buyin for a PHP 20 million guarantee.
The guarantee was eventually breached by Flight C, which held the biggest attendance among all four flights. Flight D turbo is still ongoing, but registration closed with 153 total entries to improve the total prize pool to an astounding PHP 33,313,680.
From the 316 Flight C entries, only the top 47 survivors bagged their chips at the end of the night to advance to tomorrow's Day 2 final. Each of the survivors from all flights are guaranteed a minimum cash with the final payouts still to be determined.
Sitting on the chip leader throng among the Flight C survivors is China's Ziqiang Shi with 753,000 chips. His closest rival, at a very distant second, is South Korea's Seoha Lee with 480,000. Rounding up the podium is Chase Cokaliong of the Philippines with 453,000.
Chase Cokaliong bumped himself up with some aggressive bubble play, shoving all in with Big Slick to score some blinds, and in the following hand, raising with ace-ten suited, but finding no callers to scoop more blinds to squeak him into the third spot.
Ziqiang Shi built his stack by knocking out Emmanuel Segismundo in the later stages and then scoring a double elimination of Juden Francisco and Ono Shintaro to catapult him into the chip lead.
The main highlight of the day was the night-ending bubble hand that saw Ryo Miyata's aces get cracked by the kings of Emmanuel Derecho. A king on the flop gave Derecho the lead and went on the way to eliminate Miyata as the bubble boy and sending all 47 survivors to the Day 2 final.
Some notable players who also advanced to Day 2 were Justin Ong (317,000), Tom Verbruggen (222,000) Edwards Lawford (144,000) and Sung Choun Joo (76,000)
The Day 2 final will resume tomorrow Sunday, March 8 at 12 noon local time.
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Click HERE for the full chip counts of Flight C survivors.
Here are the top ten chip counts: