While poker action is taking place all over the world these days, much of it is concentrated at the Atlantis Paradise Resort in the Bahamas, where the WSOP Paradise made its opening kick-off. Offering 15 championship bracelets and a total of over $50 million in tournament guarantees, the festival has already managed to reveal the name of the first lucky player to take home a 7-figure bounty to go along with his bracelet.
First bracelet handed over
Since the opening $1,500 Mystery Millions event offers up to 5 flights for a $5 million guarantee, we managed to hand over the first bracelet from Event #2, which was the $1,500 Millionaire Maker. The hybrid tournament was played online on the GG platform where 3,496 players took care of the $5,233,000 prizepool . From that field, the top 100 qualified for the Bahamas, where the final playoffs awaited them.
They all had a $5,000 bounty in their pockets at that point, which ended up in the hands of Czech player Josef Šnejberg (97th place), for example. As the name of the tournament suggests, the winner was waiting for an outright million dollars, which, along with the championship bracelet, ended up in the hands of Brazilian Allan Mello. "I can't believe it, I've always dreamed of something like this! Even though it was a long and tough day, playing for almost 15 hours, I tried to play the best I could and I'm delighted with how it all turned out."
| # | NAME | COUNTRY | PRIZE |
| 1. | Allan Mello | BRA | 1,000,000$ |
| 2. | Nazar Buhaiov | UKR | 593,500$ |
| 3. | Morten Norland | NOR | 263,500$ |
| 4. | Maksim Vaskresenski | POL | 158,500$ |
| 5. | Maxime Parys | FRA | 128,000$ |
| 6. | Clemen Deng | USA | 103,500$ |
| 7. | Kasparas Klezys | LIT | 81,100$ |
| 8. | Arnaud Enselme | FRA | 65,000$ |
| 9. | Roland Israelashvili | USA | 50,000$ |
Mission accomplished
The aforementioned Mystery Million didn't look the best with the guarantee until the last moment, but in the end it still managed to surpass that mark. The final 3,446 entries meant a prizepool worth $5,169,000, with a $420,000 reward awaiting the champion. A number of familiar names will be playing for it tonight, with Maria Ho settling for the chiplead , and Davidi Kitai, Phil Hellmuth, Mikita Badziakouski and Sam Greenwood among others keeping her company .
Unique High Roller
In addition to these "mass" tournaments, there was also a treat for the most demanding players, the unique GGMillion$ high roller, which guarantees up to $10 million with a $25,000 buy-in. The opening two days, not often seen on the high roller scene, kicked off with Day 1A, which saw 24 names out of 156 players finish the day.
The star-studded field at this point is led by Triton Series record holder Jason Koon, who would surely add a valuable bracelet to his three-tooth trophy haul. It certainly won't be easy though, as Fedor Holz, Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel, Nick Schulman, Espen Jorstad and Danny Tang are all certain to advance from this event alone.
Source - WSOPplus, PokerNews
