Main Event
Day 1a Completed
Main Event
Day 1a Completed
Player | Chips | Progress |
---|---|---|
Soheb Porbandarwala | 218,600 | |
Konstantin Bucherl | 187,900 | |
Thomas Bichon | 185,000 | |
John O'Shea | 184,400 | 12,400 |
Joep van den Bijgaart | 167,600 | 42,600 |
|
152,800 | |
|
152,700 | |
|
149,300 | |
|
145,400 | |
|
144,900 | |
|
144,000 | |
|
130,500 | |
Barry Shulman | 129,200 | 6,200 |
William Thorson | 125,600 | 33,600 |
Chance Kornuth | 124,800 | 29,800 |
|
123,300 | |
Benny Spindler | 120,100 | 40,100 |
|
118,800 | 29,800 |
Rumit Somaiya | 116,400 | |
|
116,100 | |
|
113,400 | |
|
112,100 | |
Jamie Burland | 112,100 | |
Alex Kravchenko | 111,000 | 62,000 |
Tom Marchese | 110,200 | 10,200 |
Today the players fell quicker than the raindrops outside on this greying Thursday in London town. 339 players deposited £5,000 into the swelling pot for their chance to take over from Aaron Gustavson, who beat Peter Eastgate heads up last year.
By the end of the day, over half the field were eliminated as the aggression in poker has now reached such a level that many would regard it as simply reckless the way they threw their chips away today.
Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst, Luca Pagano and Lex Veldhuis were all casualties today as were Sorel Mizzi, Chris Moorman and Jeff Madsen. Thomas Bichon is in among the chip leaders with 185,000 while Greg Raymer and Barry Shulman are also still in the mix. The chip leader at the end of the day though is Soheb Porbandarwala with a huge 218,600 and is believed to be the only player over the 200,000 mark.
Full chip counts will be following later tonight while we will be back here tomorrow at 12pm local time for Day 1b, which is expect to get over the 400 mark in terms of runners which would put the tournament in the running for the biggest field in UK poker history.
Jerry Buss raised from the button, making it 2,500 to skate. Both blinds called, including Jasper Te Selle in the big. The flop came , and the action checked to Buss. He moved all in for 16,100 total, and the small blind snap-called. Te Selle ducked out, and the cards were on their backs with Buss at risk.
Showdown
Buss:
Opponent:
Turn: (bink!)
River: irrelevant, as Buss was drawing dead and eliminated from this EPT. It sure was nice to see him over here on this side of the pond, though.
We're now playing the final four hands of the evening before play comes to a close.
Meanwhile, William Thorson is over the 100,000 mark, calling a 13,700 bet on the river of a with just to scoop.
We were standing watching the table that Kevin MacPhee is the big stack at, when all hell broke loose. Within seconds, a hoard of cameras, media, and players huddled around the table as Vicky Coren and Celina Lin got their chips into the middle heads up with each other, and each having about the same chip count to start the hand. Fittingly, it was a race:
Lin:
Coren:
"The only two women at the table," someone piped up.
"Yeah, and she has the ladies," someone else said. "Versus ace-king of hearts, too!"
Fellow Team PokerStars Pros Coren and Lin wished each other luck, and they each suggested just chopping the pot right there and moving on to the next hand. They frown on that sort of thing here, however, and it was off to the board:
Lin lost the race, and when the stacks were counted down, it was her 26,400-chip stack that was covered by just 2,000, issuing her the marching orders. She's out, and Coren has doubled up over 50,000.
Arnaud Mattern is like the fourth member of our blogging team sometimes, handily letting us know if we've missed any big action. Always an objective reporter, Arnaud is willing to share information even when he's just lost a pot for the chip lead, as was the case a minute ago.
He called us over to his table, and we noticed his stack was a bit lighter than we'd seen the last time. Here's the dirty. Mattern raised from the button with , and both blinds called including Raymer in the big. The flop was with two clubs, and the action checked through to the turn, a good card for Mattern. The small blind led out for 4,000, and Raymer promptly raised to 15,000 with just over 30,000 behind. Mattern then moved all in, the small blind folded, and Raymer called. He showed up drawing to the flush and the double-gutter.
Sure enough, a third club landed on the river, and Raymer has found his double up. He's up around 100,000 now, dropping Mattern down to about 90,000 in the process.
Young Englishman Nicky Evans has found his table suddenly stacked with a veritable who's who of poker. To his left he has Greg Raymer, Erik Seidel, Thomas Bichon and Allen Cunningham while sitting across from him is Vanessa Rousso.
Seidel just opened to 2,500 preflop but folded when Rousso moved all-in from the big blind for about 22,000. Seidel said he had ace-jack to which Rousso responded by saying she had tens.
It's an interesting table late on with Raymer chatting to Cunningham, the latter reveal he probably wouldn't have played this event had there not been multiple events and the WSOPE also happening at the same time.
"All in and a call, Table 1!"
See? Now we're talking. We walked over to see a middle-aged gentleman all in for 9,200 holding , and Team PokerStars Pro Jan Heitmann put him to the test with .
"Seven-high flop," coxed the at-risk player. Sure enough, it came , pretty much no help at all. The turn and river filled out the board, and that was that.
Heitmann tallies the knockout, moving his stack to 81,000 in the process.
"All in and a call, Table 2!" Another shout, we're running back to the floor...
David Steicke has doubled up to over 40,000 after some timely coming up against a bigger stack's . The was good enough that Steicke avoided every having a real sweat.