The first day of the MSPT Wisconsin State Poker Championship, which for the first time is being held at Milwaukee’s Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, attracted 311 entries. That made it the largest Day 1A flight in MSPT Potawatomi history, and puts the field on pace to surpassed the previous MPST venue record of 635 entries set back in the Spring of 2016.

With a little luck, the tournament could even become the largest major poker tournament ever held in Wisconsin. In order for that to happen, the field will need to grow past the 677 entries from February’s World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event.

After 14 levels of play on Friday night, the field was whittled down to 54 players with Jill Bryant and her stack of 339,000 leading the way. Bryant is a familiar face here at Potawatomi; in fact, in this very tournament one year ago she bagged the Day 1B chip lead with 371,000. She went on to finish in third place for $53,626.

Others to bag big stacks were Lei Zhou (259,000), Voytek Glab (243,500), Brian McDaniel (213,000), and Daniel Bouton (199,500), who round out the top five.

They will be joined on Day 2 by the likes of Ryan Leng (184,500), WSOPC Harveys Lake Tahoe champ Max Young (183,500), MSPT Season 8 Grand Falls champ Ahmed Taleb (172,500), 2017 MSPT Michigan State Poker Champ Chris Meyers (149,000), Howard Hankin (135,000), WSOP bracelet winner Nick Jivkov (128,000), MSPT Season 7 Potawatomi champ Travis Lauson (125,500), and World Poker Tour champs Ravi Raghavan (104,500) and Kevin Saul (63,500).

Of course, not everyone was fortunate enough to survive the night. Among those to try and fall were reigning MSPT Wisconsin State Poker Champion Andy Rubinberg, MSPT Season 6 Player of the Year Mark Hodge, MSPT Season 7 POY Rich Alsup, two-time champ MSPT Jeremy Dresch, and Keith Heine, who currently sits second on the Kimo Sabe Mezcal MSPT Season 8 Player of the Year Leaderboard.

All of those players will have the opportunity to try again in Saturday’s Day 1B flight, which will kick off at 4 p.m. local time and allow players to late register until roughly 10:30 p.m. We have it on good authority some new players, such as online poker legend Mark “P0ker H0” Kroon and inaugural MSPT Wisconsin State Poker Champion Ben Wiora, will be taking a shot.

We’ll be there to capture all the action and eliminations straight from the tournament floor, so be sure to join us then.