The third and final starting flight of the 2018 MSPT Michigan State Poker Championship at FireKeepers Casino drew 510 runners, which along with 1A’s 299 and 1B’s 462 brought the total field up to 1,271 entries.

The top 135 players will get paid a minimum of $2,093, while the eventual winner will walk away with a $218,565 first-place prize.

After 16 levels of play, just 68 bagged chips on Day 1C with Toronto’s Alvaro Oliveira Prata de Almeida and his stack of 462,000 leading the way. That is slightly behind that of 1B chip leader Irbrahim Shoubah (488,500) but ahead of Day 1A chip leader Isaac Kratchman (384,500).

Others to bag big on 1C were Nick Pupillo (426,600), Steven Stout (424,500), Jacob Jarous (368,500), and Jason Sanders (357,500), who round out the top five.

Others to make it through were Henry Zou (287,500), Ryan Terpstra (211,500), defending champ Chris Meyers (162,500), Michael Lech (125,500), Aaron Johnson (73,000), Schuyler Thornton (67,000), and Mike Shin (59,000).

Among those to try and fall on 1C were three-time MSPT champ Blake Bohn, former MSPT FireKeepers champion Mike Shanahan, two-time MSPT winner Jason Zarlenga, Minnesota’s Alex Winter, MSPT Hall of Famer Rich Alsup, MSPT Season 5 POY Mike Deis, MSPT Season 6 POY Mark Hodge, and Iowa poker pro Jeff Fielder.

Day 2 will see 173 players return to action (39 from 1A, 66 from 1B, and 68 from 1C) and play down to a winner. As usual, we’ll capture all the action straight from the tournament floor via our live updates. The final table will also be live streamed worldwide on msptpoker.com.