Last year I penned a column titled “The Death of the Six-Figure Buy-In Tournament”, declaring the super-high-roller events that have procreated across the poker world over the past three or four years as being unsustainable given the current poker economy. Well, it appears my post-mortem dissection of the Super-High-Roller tournaments was a bit premature, considering the number of entrants in the $100k Super-High-Roller tournament at the 2013 Pokerstars PCA shattered the old mark of 39 set in 2011, and absolutely crushed the 32 entrants the event attracted last year (30 entries and two reentries).

This year the tournament was once again a reentry event, but the number of entries was astounding even without the reentries, and with the reentries the field has easily topped 50 players, ending with 57 total entries (47 entrants and 10 reentries), and putting the prize-pool at over $5.5 million. This number still has the potential to go up as registration is open until the start of Day 2, and with a first-place prize that could easily be in the $2 million range, players may be rethinking their decisions to skip this event. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the tournament pass 60 entries, and possibly go as high as 65

Of the 47 entrants on Day 1, 10 players decided to call it a day after being eliminated (some for a second time), including Phil Hellmuth, Mike McDonald, and Andrew “Luckychewy” Lichtenberger, as well as Jason Koon, Paul Newey, Bryn Kenney, Brandon Steven, Jeff Gross, David Benefield, and Igor Kurganov. Newey and Kenney were the two players that busted twice before deciding not to invest another $100k on the event.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the chip-leaders heading into Day 2 of the scheduled three-day tournament. Leading the charge is Phillip Gruissem, who was also among the players to reenter, but unlike Newey or Kenney his second bullet hit the mark, and the young German who has dreams of travelling in space landed at the top of the leader-board after Day 1. Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading into Day 2:

1. Philipp Gruissem — 771,500

2. Scott Seiver — 729,000

3. Dan Shak — 650,000

4. Tom Marchese — 638,500

5. Vivek Rajkumar — 608,500

6. Jason Somerville — 604,500

7. Nick Schulman — 580,000

8. Steve O’Dwyer — 527,500

9. Eugene Katchalov — 514,500

10. David Sands — 505,500

Day 2 will kick-off at Noon local time today, and we should have the final number of entries as well as the prize-pool and payout statistics soon thereafter. You can find updates and more chip counts by visiting the PokerStars blog.

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Tags: 100k, 5 Million, David Benefield, Decisions, Dissection, Dreams, Economy, High Roller, Jeff Gross, Koon, Mike McDonald, Newey, phil hellmuth, Poker World, PokerStars, Post Mortem, Prize Pool, Record Turnout, Second Time, Spectrum

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2013 at 9:22 am and is filed under EPT News, Tournament News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.