Day 1C of the MSPT Golden Gates Casino and Poker Parlour Main Event saw 167 entrants hit the felt, bringing the total field to 354 runners. In the end, 23 players managed to achieve a Day 2 bag, with Brian Hou and his stack of 417,000 taking the overall chip lead into Day 2, ahead of Day 1A chip leader Brian Leitch (276,000) and Day 1B chip leader Ramiro Perez (353,000). Hou has three MSPT Main Event cashes to his credit, and managed a cash in November’s MSPT $360 Regional Event here at Golden Gates. Hou was also part of a four-way chop two weeks ago at a $400 DeepStack Showdown event at The Venetian for $19,000.

Other big stacks include Maury Solano (337,500), Umut Ozturk (236,000), Bradley Beetz (227,000), and Rich Dixon (204,000). Others to bag include Tom Bouziden (170,000), Nils Bardsley (156,500), Jesse Allen (107,000), Nader Wahdan (82,000), and Danny Gonzales (52,000).

Sadly, not everyone was fortunate enough to survive the day, and among those to fall short of a bag include former MSPT $360 Golden Gates Regional champs Adam Wilbur, Bobby Sanoubane, Stephen Zipprich, and “Money” Mike Maruna, and former MSPT Golden Gates Main Event champs Fred Garcia, Kane Lai, Jason Beasley, Michigan’s Cooper Wanty, Chase Bianchi, birthday boy Kanat Ozturk, and Kevin “1sickdisease” Eyster.

Day 2 will kick off tomorrow at 11 AM with 46 players returning (5 from Day 1A, 18 from Day 1B, 23 from Day 1C) and the field will play down to a winner. The final table will be streamed with hole cards on a fifteen-minute delay on both Twitch and right here at MSPTpoker.com. As always, all of the action can also be found right here on the blog, so be sure to tune in tomorrow to find out who will walk away with the MSPT Golden Gates Main Event title!