Talal Shakerchi Leads Record-Setting PokerStars Players Championship

Jeff Walsh · January 7, 2019

History was made at the 2019 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Sunday.

The year-long Platinum Pass promoted PokerStars Players NL Hold’em Championship officially became the biggest $25,000 tournament of all time.

The Imperial Ballroom of the Atlantis Resort & Casino was buzzing throughout the day as 1,014 players, including over 300+ Platinum Pass winners, registered and took their seat hoping to take the first step to a life-changing multi-million dollar payday.

After eight one hour levels of play, British businessman and regular high roller participant Talal Shakerchi (425,300) bagged the overnight chip lead.

“It was just very lucky, I had very lucky cards today,” Shakerchi told PocketFives. “It was a lot of making straights, a couple sets, flush – a big flush. Actually, I won all the money with my shit hands. I only had a couple of big hands and I either lost money with them or didn’t make anything.”

Right behind him on the chip counts is Nevada’s Dan O’Brien (301,200).

“That was a fun day, I was fortunate and had a lot of great guys at the table. I haven’t really been playing too much lately so I just wanted to get back in there and compete and also talk to some good people,” O’ Brien said at the end of Day One. “I definitely felt a little bit of the nerves coming in because we’re playing for so much money and it’s been a while and I’m going to face some of the better players. But there’s a lot of good value here and I can’t believe we have over 1000 people.”

Of those more than 1,000 runners, roughly 75% survived the day. That means that 756 players who will be returning for Day 2. Other top names to bag big stacks include Shyam ’s_dot111’ Srinivasan (254,000), Steven ’SvZff’ van Zadelhoff (210,000), Kristen ‘krissyb24’ Bicknell (207,900), Chris ‘Big Huni’ Hunichen (194,000), and Eric ‘basebaldy’ Baldwin (181,300).

The field was packed with star power as players from every era flocked to the Bahamas to participate. High profile pros including Patrik Antonius (113,300) and Chris Moneymaker (94,200) survived the day. Phil Hellmuth (29,300) made his standard practice late arrival and bagged chips as well. Jason Mercier made his return to the live scene and will advance to Day 2 as will Alex Foxen (99,100), Chris Moorman (89,500), Lex Veldhuis (80,300), Jason Somerville (75,200), Jason Koon (71,600), Joe Cada (70,000) and Isaac Haxton (68,800)- among many others.

Plenty of those over 300 Platinum Pass winners managed to keep their dream alive as well. The First Lady of Poker, Linda Johnson (57,100), finished the day with close to her starting stack and the poker’s “minister of information” Kevin Mathers (75,900) also made it through. Joey Ingram (150,200)surged in the chip counts, joining him in bagging chips was Nathan Manuel (28,600), Jonas Ramanauskas (82,600) and Aleeyah Jadavji (37,400), who we have featured on PocketFives. The Platinum Pass pros David Peters (66,500), Stephen Chidwick (57,700) and Mikita Badziakouski (94,400) also made it through.

However, the field saw some big names hit the rail as well. Daniel Negreanu’s 2019 got off to a rough start as he busted near the end of the night. Vanessa Selbst made a return to the felt but ultimately was unable to survive. She was in good company as plenty of pros were unable to find a bag including Nick Schulman, Shaun Deeb, Maria Ho, Ben Lamb, Koray Aldemir, Steffan Sontheimer, Andre Akkari, Rainer Kempe, Chino Rheem, and Bryn Kenney.

Registration for the PSPC is open through the start of Day 2, so there is still the opportunity for the field size to increase. Day 2 will be one of the largest Day 2’s in the history of the PCA as the 756 returning players is still more than the entire field size of the previous largest $25,000 buy-in.

Play for the 2019 PSPC resumes at noon ET on Monday.