Day 1A of the MSPT FireKeepers Casino in Battle Creek, Michigan attracted 285 runners. That made it the largest 1A flight in the tour’s 11 visits to the property and puts the field on pace to once again eclipse a seven-figure prize pool with two starting flights still to go.
After 16 levels of play, just 34 players remained with Steven Williams and his stack of 426,000 leading the way. Williams has made two deep runs in past MSPT FireKeepers Main Events. Back in Season 5, he took 30th for $2,500, and the following year he finished 17th for $4,055. He’ll look to improve on those deep runs come Sunday.
Others to bag big stacks were WPT champ Kevin Saul (388,000), Jeffery Castle (376,500), Tony Pena (311,500), and MSPT Season 4 Player of the Year Pat Steele (251,500), who round out the top five.
They will be joined on Sunday by the likes of Chris Blik (190,500), two-time MSPT champ Blake Bohn (166,000), MSPT Season 8 Meskwaki runner-up Victor Hoffman (151,000), Mark Ader (89,000), and Martin Dubois (47,500).
Of course, not everyone was fortunate enough to find a bag. Among those to hit the rail were poker pro Kenna James, World Poker Tour champ Ravi Raghavan, current MSPT POY points leader Aaron Johnson, Kimo Sabe Mezcal MSPT Season 8 Player of the Year Chris Meyers, and former MSPT champs Ryan Dykhouse, Kou Vang, Jeremy Dresch, and Nathan Trenkamp.
Registration is now open for Day 1B, which will begin at Noon local time on Friday. It’s going to be busy, so we encourage players to register early.