The Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic kicked off on Wednesday with two tournaments, most notably the $25k High-Roller tournament, which drew an impressive 36 entrants, creating a total prize-pool of $900,000. Some of poker’s biggest names entered the tournament, and after one day of play it was Full Tilt Poker pro David Benyamine on top of the leader-board.

In all, 24 players survived Day 1 play including 2009 November Nine member Phil Ivey, 2010 November Nine member Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Jon Turner who is currently second in chips, and Sorel Mizzi who always seems to perform well in the $25k tournaments. Also in the field are two other WSOP November Nine members Fillipo Candio and John Dolan.

The Merit Cyprus Classic will run from August 17th to the 26th, culminating with the $10,000 Championship Tournament. Full Tilt has taken over sponsorship of the tournament;The Merit Cyprus Classic having previously been a WPT event. Last year’s Main Event saw 181 players come to the island destination; Full Tilt Poker is hoping for over 250 runners for this go round of the tournament.

Day 2 of the High-Roller tournament will begin at 5PM local time on Thursday.

If you wish to be as good as the players listed above, remember one of the most important things is Poker Bankroll Management and to get you started why not sign up at Full Tilt Poker using a Full Tilt Referral Code to get a great deposit bonus when you sign up.

Related posts:

1. Full Tilt, PokerStars and AP granted extensions by DoJ Poker players were expecting to see what the next step in the process begun on Black Friday was going to be at the end of...

Tags: David Benyamine, Fillipo Candio, Full tilt, Full tilt Poker, Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic, Merit Cyprus Classic, Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Phil Ivey, Sorel Mizzi

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under 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.