Last year’s partypoker Caribbean Poker Party Main Event took place at the Baha Mar resort in The Bahamas and was a wall-to-wall celebration of live poker, lit orange and set to a backdrop of bubbles, be they in champagne flutes or floating on the top of infinity pools.  

This year’s partypoker CPP Main Event is, of course, very different, but while it can take place anywhere there’s WiFi, the actual play is at virtual felt rather than the air-conditioned tables in a Bahamian resort. Every hand will be played out online, and while the Day 1a field totalled 490 players, just 70 players made it through to Day 2.  

With a bumper $5 million guarantee, the 490 entries worth $5,000+$300 each mean that $2.45 million of that prizepool is already in the can from entries and Day 1b on Tuesday 24th November is expected to be much busier than Day 1a.  

After the requisite 18 levels, each lasting 25 minutes, it was the Australian high roller Michael Addamo who racked up the biggest chip-stack of 18,658,743 chips. With each player starting with a million chips, Brazilian player Pedro Chaves went into the books in 2nd position with 17,110,419 and Dutch player Manuel Ruivo ended the night with 16,674,394, good for a podium finish.