Thanks to three record-breaking starting flights, the latest stop at FireKeepers Casino established itself as the largest Main Event in Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) history outside of Las Vegas.

The 165 entries from Day 1a (a record opening starting flight for the property) and 310 from Dab 1b (the biggest single starting flight outside of the Vegas stop) combined with Day 1c's 345 runners to create a combined field of 820 entries, which surpassed last spring's 614 entries to set a new record for largest poker major in Michigan.

The $820,000 total prize pool will be distributed to the top 81 players with a min-cash being worth $2,064 and the eventual winner taking home $174,658. Making things even sweeter is the fact that whoever finishes runner-up will still take home six figures -- $106,383 to be exact.

After 14 levels of play on Saturday night, just 73 players survived the Day 1c flight with Nevada Saad (pictured above) of Dearborn Heights and his stack of 262,500 . That is good enough for the overall chip lead, ahead of both Day 1a and 1b chip leaders Isaac Kratchman and Jonathan Dimatteo, who bagged 191,000 and 249,500 respectively.

Saad, a cash game player with no documented tournament cashes to his name, got extremely lucky in the penultimate level of the night when he got his stack of 98,300 all in preflop holding Big Slick against Brian Riemersma's pocket kings. Saad failed to catch an ace, but the board did bring four diamonds and he shipped the double thanks to his ace being of the diamond variety.

Others who advanced from the Day 1c flight are poker pro Aaron Massey (229,500), former MSPT FireKeepers champ Thomas Midena (155,500), Minnesota pro Aaron Johnson (122,500), defending champ Michael Ferrarotti (94,000), and circuit grinder Nick Pupillo (74,000).

Of course not everyone was so lucky. Those failing to make Day 2 today were World Series of Poker bracelet winners Adam Friedman and Nick Jivkov, Season 5 MSPT POY Mike Deis, MSPT Potawatomi champ and current POY leader Travis Lauson, and poker pro Kenna James.

With the 33 survivors from Day 1a and 61 from 1b, 167 total players will return for Day 2 action at 11:00 a.m. local time. Be sure to join us then as we capture all the action as we look to crown the champion of the MSPT's largest-ever event in the Midwest.