Day 1a attracted 135 entries with 56 players surviving after nine levels of 40-minutes each.
Theophile George took the overnight chip lead after parlaying his 30,000 starting stack into a whopping pile of 273,700 in chips. Ukraine's Vasyl Laba (273,700) was the only other player to end the day with more than 200,000 in chips.
The entries will continue to pile with two more opening flights to go and late registration open for the first three blind levels of Day 2.