Registration is closed and the numbers are in.
Day 1F saw 582 entries, bringing the official number of entries at the 2014 Macau Millions up to 1,804. Players are now participating in the largest poker tournament ever held in Asia.
Out of the 582 entries, 41 players will advance to Day 2. Pending any repeat qualifiers, this will bring the number of Day 2 players up to 125.
For more than a week, we've seen the Macau Millions bulge beyond anyone's expectations. The first three days showed a modest increase. In fact, Day 1C even drew 43 players less than Day 1C did back in 2011.
When the tournament took a two-day hiatus, the 2014 Macau Millions stood at 430 players while the 2011 event had 412 players by that point. Staff were hoping to beat the record set in 2011, but they also had one less Day 1 in 2014.
To beat the record, they were going to have to average more than 300 entries for the remaining three days. It seemed a bit optimistic at the time since before Day 1D, the largest starting flight was 270 players.
The tournament had to beat that record three times in a row. Everyone was surprised when Day 1D clocked in at 335 entrants and were then blown away when 457 signed up for Day 1E.
Since the beginning, staff knew that Day 1F would be the largest, but some didn't think it'd get much bigger than Day 1E. They did open the registration line 30 minutes earlier just in case though.
It turned out to be a good idea since it still took a few hours to seat all the alternates and re-entries. The floor paused the tournament clock on Level 3 (100/200 blinds) and it stayed there for nearly three hours.
This caused quite the slowdown since levels are scheduled to be 25-minutes long. But the clock started back up at 10:45 p.m. when the last player took his seat. That player was Alexandre Chieng, who won APPT Macau last year and who's already qualified for Day 2 twice.
No player has ever made Day 2 three times at the Macau Millions and Chieng is hoping to become the first. Chieng is also the only multi-day survivor in the field. Both Percy Yung and and Jack Lee are waiting until tomorrow to resume their Macau Millions adventure.
Alexander Villegas is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog.