Day 1a of the MSPT Season 16 $1,110 Minnesota State Poker Championship at Running Aces Casino & Racetrack has come to a close after seeing 219 entrants kick things off.

A full day of action was played to completion with the hard stop of 25 players being reached with 0:40 remaining in Level 15 (3,000/6,000/6,000).

The final level was full of eliminations which saw chip leader three-time MSPT champ Carl Carodenuto’s 300k stack balloon to 912,000 to end the night, leading the first batch of players by a wide margin into Day 2.

Matt Dodd was able to hold onto his steam throughout the day bagging a respectable 584,000, edging out Ezequiel Gonzalez (478,000), Tanner Pray (465,000), and Dennis Stevermer (318,000) as they round out the top five stacks of the flight.

Event #4 Winner Jake Long secured the final elimination of the night to bag 317,000 while two-time MSPT champ Ben Marsh (296,000), five-time MSPT champ Blake Bohn (261,000), back-to-back Player of the Year Umut Ozturk (254,000), Jesse Green (82,000), and fellow MSPT Hall of Famer Josh Reichard (61,000) all found a Day 2 berth.

Among those to try and fall on Day 1a included Yume Carr, Event #3 winner Anthony Kippels, Jesse Scholtes, Robert Schoonover, Ramon Ziadeh and Preston Kesselring, just to name a few.

Those players, as well as any newcomers, have two more starting flights to jump back into action. Day 1b will kick off at 2:00 p.m. local time Friday, while the third and final flight, Day 1c, will take place at noon on Saturday.

The surviving players from each flight will then return at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday to play down to a winner.

Join us tomorrow as we continue to bring you all the action and eliminations straight from the tournament floor at Running Aces Casino & Racetrack!

MSPT Season 16 Minnesota Poker State Championship Remaining Schedule