Benyamine Leads Cyprus High Roller

David Benyamine

David Benyamine built a monster stack on Day 1 of the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic High Roller event yesterday.

The $25,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em tournament drew 36 runners who combined to form a prize pool of $873,000 with $392,000 dedicated for first place.

The list of entrants reads like a who's who of poker with David Benyamine, Phil Ivey, Jon "PearlJammer" Turner, Carter Phillips, Sorel Mizzi and Andrew Feldman still in the hunt.

Hasan Habib, Erik Cajelais and Chino Rheem were among the 16 players who busted on Day 1.

Notably there are still three November Niners in the field with John Dolan, Filippo Candio and Michael Mizrachi looking to boost their results before the 2010 WSOP final table.

Red-hot Mizrachi is stacked with 219,300 chips and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. He has won nearly $2.5 million since April.

Benyamine is the man to beat, however, as he accumulated 285,000 chips on Day 1 and will be the overnight chip leader.

Day 2 of the event will begin at 5 p.m. Cyprus time while the Merit Cyprus Classic main event is scheduled to start on Friday.