Day 1A of the latest MSPT Canterbury Park $1,100 Main Event drew a record 259 entries, which was the largest opening flight in 16 stops. That puts us on pace to eclipse 500 runners for the first time in MSPT Canterbury history!

After 14 levels of play, the field was whittled down to 41 players with three-time MSPT champ and his stack of 299,000 leading the way. Back in Season 6, Carodenuto won the season finale at Canterbury Park for $116,103.

He returned in April 2016 and defended his title for $90,805, and as if that wasn’t impressive enough, he took down the MSPT Golden Gates that same season for $114,072 to make MSPT history. Only time will tell if Carodenuto can win an unprecedented fourth title.

Others to bag big stacks were Rob Wazwaz (293,500), MSPT Season 7 Canterbury Park champ Jon Kim (284,500), Steve Houle (261,000), and Alan Jeevanathan (214,000), who round out the top five.

Joining them at the end of the night were Kimo Sabe Mezcal MSPT Season 8 Player of the Year Chris Meyers (204,000), Thao “Scratch” Thiem (177,000), MSPT Season 5 Ho-Chunk champ Jason Sell (162,000), Flop the World’s Ben Valder (115,500), current MSPT POY points leader Aaron Johnson (115,000), MSPT Season 8 Running Aces champ Jeff Birt (110,500), MSPT Season 2 Canterbury Park champ Kou Vang (92,000), Minnesota Poker Hall of Famer Tony Hartmann (67,000), and two-time MSPT champ Johnny Hayes (53,000).

Not everyone was fortunate enough to find a bag. Among those to play and fall on 1A were three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Dutch Boyd, 2016 MN Poker Mag Player of the Year Saad Ghanem, and poker couple Tom and Sherry Hammers.

Likewise, a slew of former MSPT champs hit the rail including Max Young (MSPT Season 9 Golden Gates), Joe Matheson (MSPT Season 1 Running Aces), Blake Bohn (two-time champ), Jeremy Dresch (two-time champ), Luke Arora (MSPT Season 7 Running Aces), Josh Reichard (MSPT Season 4 Ho-Chunk), Dan “DQ” Hendrickson (MSPT Season 6 Canterbury Park), and Max Havlish (MSPT Season 8 Meskwaki).

Those players and any newcomers will have the opportunity to fire on Day 1B, which will kick off at 4 p.m. local time on Saturday. That is when the members of the UCCS Mountain Lion Poker Club will be in action. We’ll capture it all here in the live blog, so be sure to join us then.