Mike "Tîmex" McDonald almost skipped playing the biggest buy-in poker tournament the world has ever seen, but after late registering he finished Day 1 atop the final eight in the 2015 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker $51,000 Super High Roller.
"Me registering very late, that wasn't a [Phil] Hellmuth-style, 'I don't think I can play deep stack,' or 'I want to make an entrance' kind of thing," McDonald said after Day 1 finished. "It was literally just that throughout the tournament I thought it was much tougher than my expectations. I thought it would be tough in the sense of a live super high roller, but this was tough in the sense that the average player was extremely good.