Dmitrii Nazarov Takes Merit Poker Main Event Day 1b Lead
He won the biggest pot of the flight on the bubble and bagged 2,025,000 chips.
Dmitrii Nazarov finished Day 1b of the $5,500 Merit Poker Main Event with the overall chip lead after bagging 2,025,000. The flight drew 228 more entries, lifted the field to 444, and left 34 players in the money with 66 already locked for Day 2.
According to PokerNews, the event is being played at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa during the 2026 NOIR Poker Series. It carries a $3,000,000 guarantee, starts each player with 100,000 chips, and allows unlimited reentries, with late registration open until the start of Level 11 in each flight. The previous Merit Poker Main Event was held in May at the Merit Poker Classic series, where Ivan Ilichev won $525,000.
Nazarov's stack came from the biggest pot of the tournament so far. With 35 players left and 34 paid spots, Hassan Nashar opened from the hijack to 40,000, Nazarov called on the button, and the pot kept building through a 4♠ 9♣ J♣ flop, a 7♥ turn and a 4♣ river.
Nashar bet around 50,000 on the flop, 75,000 on the turn and 100,000 on the river before Nazarov shoved. Nashar showed K♣ 2♣ for a rivered flush, but Nazarov tabled J♥ J♠ for a rivered full house and won the hand. The remaining 34 players moved into the money, and Nashar went out as the Day 1b bubble boy.
The hand also pushed Nazarov past 2 million chips, making him the first player to cross that mark. Aren Bezhanyan finished second on 1,945,000 after knocking out Tobias Peters, Wael Sarkis and Stefan-Sebastian Ionita, while Alexander Sokolovsky turned a fresh Day 1b stack into 1,500,000 and third place after scraping through Day 1a short.
Chengxu Hu bagged 1,170,000, Ahmed Sylla 950,000, Natalia Nikitina 940,000, Aleksandr Chernikov 880,000, Martins Adeniya 870,000, Sebastian Toro 840,000, Ali Al-Kubasi 790,000, Dmytro Yevseienko 790,000, Yuxi Huang 780,000, Adrian State 665,000, Patrick Brooks 505,000, Zorlu Er 370,000 and Dietrich Fast 360,000. Nikitina and Huang were the only two women to survive the flight.
Tuesday still had two starting flights to go. Day 1c gets underway at noon, and the turbo Day 1d follows at 6 p.m. before the field combines on Wednesday and the levels stretch to 60 minutes.
