Out of the 171 players who registered (twice in 23 cases) in today’s $550 Phase 1 tournament, only 20 are still at the tables. These players are all qualified for the big dance, and will bring their stack with them. They are currently bagging their belongings, and will pick a partypoker Million North America Day 1 to send them to.

Daniel Watton (pictured below), bagged the biggest stack, as he ended the day with 1,772,500 tournament chips, well above the more-or-less 1M average for Day 1s.

Here is a list of today’s qualifiers, excluding counts. They will be added to the Phase 1 Results page shortly, at which point their stacks will be published.

In the tournament hall unfolds the first of 3 inner series $550 Phase 1s. The Event attracted a total of 171 players, 23 of which re-entered after running out of chips, bringing the total entries to 194. Players will therefore play down to 20, at which point the tournament will be halted and chips will be sent to 1 of 2 partypoker Million North America Day 1s, which are set to start on Friday and Saturday, at noon sharp.

Photographs of levels 8-9:

The players in today’s $550 Phase 1 tournament are taking their first break of the day. Registration will continue for another 2 levels following this break, but the trend is very strong as there are already 157 players in the tournament plus 6 re-entries. So far, this would mean that 17 players take stacks from today to the Day 1 of their choice in the partypoker Million North America.

Play resumes in just seconds. We’ll publish final prize pool information when registration closes in about an hour.

May 1st saw the second in a string of 5 back-to-back Phase 1 tournaments in the partypoker Million North America. This was the $275 version of a Phase 1 that saw players begin with 50,000 tournament chips and play down to 5% of the total entries. In this case, there were 97 entries (80 entries, 17 re-entries), which meant that 5 players would qualify a stack for Day 1 in the Million North America.

When the dust settled after 21 levels of play, Sebastien Proulx and Aaron Shepard had both qualified for Day 1 with stacks above 1.5M in chips to carry forward and three other players – Ali Zakeri, Ho Kwan Jeremy Yip, and Jean-Marc Le Bouthillier had also gone through. This brings the total number of Phase 1 seats in the event to just under 160, only a few of which have been used in Online Day 1s.

Today, Wednesday, and Thursday bring 3 more Phase 1 opportunities for players, this time of the $550 variety. In these final 3 Phase 1s in the tournament, players will start with 100,000 chips and play down until 10% of the total field remains. The numbers in the Tuesday and Wednesday Phase 1s will be bolstered by a massive 81 seats that were awarded in last night’s Mega Overlay, including the 30 seats added to the prize pool.