Alex Livingston Second in Chips After Busy Day 1 of €10,300 PLO Grand Slam Championship
It was another eventful day of four-card poker at Arena Casino Tirana. After the start of the €10,300 PLO Grand Slam Championship was delayed by an hour due to a lack of early interest, the following hours blew every expectation out of the water. Over the course of nine levels, 96 entries were made. The €1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool was almost surpassed already, with two more levels of late registration to go on Day 2.
At the end of the day, 37 players found a bag, and Alex Livingston was one of them. The two-time bracelet winner does not frequent European stops, but he made an exception for the first-ever Diamond Poker Series event. Livingston only needed one bullet today to increase his starting stack of 200,000 to 1,258,000, placing him second on the leaderboard only behind Harun Ertural.
Ertural bagged 1,488,000 at the end of the night, good for 149 big blinds at the start of Day 2. Not much is known about the German player as a min-cash would likely eclipse his registered total live earnings. Meanwhile, Spanish regular Ka Kwan Lau was the very first entry of the day and made full use of the many hands he played as he ended up in third with a stack of 1,200,000.
Daniel Montagnolli finished fourth in chips with 1,134,000 after a late-night surge, while €5,200 PLO Opener champion Aaron Pahlawani was the last player to bag a seven-figure stack on the hunt for his second trophy of the week. Finish poker legend Joni Jouhkimainen showed up for the first time this week today and immediately displayed his prowess as he also squeaked into the top ten.
End of Day 1 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Harun Ertural | Germany | 1,488,000 | 149 |
| 2 | Alex Livingston | Canada | 1,258,000 | 126 |
| 3 | Ka Kwan Lau | Spain | 1,200,000 | 120 |
| 4 | Daniel Montagnolli | Austria | 1,134,000 | 113 |
| 5 | Aaron Pahlawani | Austria | 1,019,000 | 102 |
| 6 | Joni Jouhkimainen | Finland | 911,000 | 91 |
| 7 | Vlado Banicevic | Montenegro | 886,000 | 89 |
| 8 | "Sie Pie" | 772,000 | 77 | |
| 9 | Lautaro Guerra | Spain | 750,000 | 75 |
| 10 | Vadim Zakharyan | Israel | 711,000 | 71 |
Others who made it through Day 1 include bracelet winners Oleksii Kovalchuk (455,000) and Nikolaos Lampropoulos (377,000), Norwegian high roller Tom-Aksel Bedell (256,000), and €5,200 Opener final tableists Hristo Bogdanov (464,000), Youness Barakat (399,000) and Stanislau Melhui (85,000).
Less lucky were the likes of bracelet winners Simeon Naydenov, Amir Mozaffarian, fromer soccer pro Max Kruse, PLO Opener runner-up Pavel Izotov, and Cesar Garcia. They made one or more attempts on Day 1 but fell short of finding a bag, with Garcia taking the title for most reentries, having fired no less than five bullets throughout the day.
The remaining players will return tomorrow, November 8, at 3 p.m. local time to play Day 2 of the event. As stated, late registration will be open for the first two 60-minute levels of the day and unlimited reentries are still available to everyone. The blinds will start in Level 10: 5,000/10,000 (10,000) and Day 2 is scheduled to play down to the final 16 players, who will then bag up and return for the final day of the event.
Tune back in to PokerNews tomorrow as the seven-figure guarantee is looking to get smashed on Day 2 of the first-ever €10,300 PLO Grand Slam Championship.