Yesterday the biggest buy in tournament in poker history celebrated its opening.
Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil, is the organizer of the One Drop Super High Roller festival.
26 players bought in for a cool one million Euros in the Casino de Monte Carlo. What’s new is that only amateurs were allowed to buy in this time, none of the big high roller poker players were invited for the €1M Big One for One Drop Extravaganza tournament. €111,111 of each buy in will go to the ‘One Drop Foundation’, a charity organization by Guy Laliberte which focuses on the access to clean water in Africa.
Amongst the rich business men were Talal Shakerch, Paul Newy, Andrew Pantling, Mark Teltscher and Jason Strasser. Every player started with 5 million in chips and the blinds were 6k/12k which means a very playable 400 big blinds. Each participant has the option of a re-entry which was used by the organizer himself Laliberte and Matchbook CEO Andrew Pantling.
At the end of day 1 the US-American Alfred Decarolis finished as the chipleader with 13,825,000 chips with Dan Shak following in second with 10,735,000. A total of 24 players remain in the tournament and registration is still open until the start of day 2 today.
Here are the chip counts:
Player |
Nationality |
Chips |
Alfred Decarolis |
US |
13,825,000 |
Dan Shak |
US |
10,735,000 |
Brandon Steven |
US |
8,850,000 |
Haralabos Voulgaris |
MC |
8,765,000 |
David Einhorn |
US |
8,375,000 |
Elton Tsang |
HK |
7,920,000 |
Andrew Pantling |
CA |
7,600,000 |
James Bord |
GB |
7,375,000 |
Paul Phua |
MY |
6,455,000 |
Sean Dempsey |
US |
6,380,000 |
Talal Shakerchi |
GB |
6,280,000 |
Cary Katz |
US |
6,220,000 |
Jason Strasser |
US |
5,585,000 |
Bob Safai |
US |
4,600,000 |
Anatoly Gurtovoy |
RU |
4,475,000 |
Patrick Madden |
US |
4,275,000 |
Guy Laliberté |
CA |
4,000,000 |
Mark Teltscher |
GB |
3,750,000 |
Pierre Garand |
CA |
3,585,000 |
Paul Newey |
GB |
2,805,000 |
Yaqi Sun |
CN |
2,645,000 |
Rick Salomon |
US |
2,255,000 |
Zuo Wang |
CN |
1,840,000 |
Tony Bloom |
GB |
1,200,000 |
Source: Neil Stoddart / PokerNews.com