The 2020 World Series of Poker Main Event continued on Sunday as United States-based players located in Nevada and New Jersey took their shot at the lone $10,000 buy-in Day 1 flight on WSOP.com in a bid to become the next WSOP World Champion.

At the end of 12 hours of play, the field of 705 players had just 71 remaining and three-time WSOP bracelet winner Upeshka De Silva emerged as the overnight chip leader with 1,930,067 in chips. He is followed by ‘vforvictoria’ who sits in a close second place with 1,792,716 in chips and ‘Samthedog76’ who rounds out the top three with 1,529,044 in chips.

The healthy field size propelled the prize pool to $6,768,000, far-and-away the largest prize pool in regulated U.S. online poker history. And just like the international portion of the Main Event which held its opening flights on GGPoker, both the first and second-place finishers will be guaranteed paydays of more than $1 million dollars.

Final Table Payouts

The U.S.-based field featured plenty of big-time poker stars and previous WSOP bracelet winners. But at the end of a full 12 hours of play, just 71 from the Day 1 field still had a shot at making the final table which is set to play out live at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino on December 28.

The tournament got underway at 12:00 noon local time (3:00 pm ET) with players set to play 22 full 30-minute levels. And while it would take nearly all of the 12-hour day before the final 107 players made the money, the first elimination came swiftly – just a few hands into the tournament. In a classic set-up hand, Chris ‘Pay_Son’ Staats found himself with pocket aces and ‘ATOWNLEWIS’ woke up with pocket kings. After a preflop raising war, all their chips made it into the middle with Staats’ aces holding up and ‘ATOWNLEWIS’s day ending early.

But it wasn’t long before ‘ATOWNLEWIS’ had some company on the rail, as plenty of notable names busted well before the money. Chris Hunichen, Aaron Mermelstein, James Carroll, and 15-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth all made their exits in the first half of the day.

Of course, Hellmuth was by no means the only previous bracelet winner unable to advance to Day 2. Phil Galfond, Eric Baldwin, Nathan Gamble, Michael Gagliano, Brandon Adams, Ben Yu, Chance Kornuth, Mike Matusow, Connor Drinan, Michael Mizrachi, as well as former #1-ranked pros Bryan Piccioli, Calvin Anderson, and Shaun Deeb were among those that will have to wait until next year to add to their gold bracelet totals.

Daniel Negreanu’s bid for a seventh bracelet, as well as cashing in on a number of $100,000 bracelet bets, came to an end as well. Soon after Adrian ‘Partee’ Buckley had the unfortunate distinction of bubbling the Main Event, when his lost to ‘Samthedog76’s in heartbreaking fashion on a runout, Negreanu himself busted out of the tournament, collecting a min-cash of $14,890.

Joining Negreanu in surviving the bubble, but not the day included Ian Steinman (105th, $14,890), Jed Hoffman (102nd, $14,890), Matt Affleck (97th, $14,890), Lauren Roberts (88th, $15,566), David Coleman (76th, $15,566) and eight-time WSOP Circuit Ring and gold bracelet winner Michael Lech (74th, $15,566).

While many notable names are no longer in the hunt for the 2020 title, there are plenty of players to keep an eye on when play resumes. Taylor Von Krigenbergh and Galen Hall both have top-ten stacks. Fan favorites Nick Shulman, Jason Somerville, and Maria Ho are all still in the running with plenty of chips, and four-time World Poker Tour champion Darren Elias along with 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Ryan Riess are also still in the hunt.

The remaining players return to WSOP.com at noon on Monday to play down to the final nine players who will determine a winner, live, on December 28 at the Rio in Las Vegas. At the same time the final eight players in the 2020 GGPoker World Series of Poker Main Event are preparing to play down to a winner on Tuesday, December 15 at King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. The winner of both the international and the U.S. tournaments will then meet in a heads-up match, with $1 million added, on December 30 at the Rio in Las Vegas to determine the 2020 champion.

Top Ten Chip Counts