News | European Poker Tour

2013 PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event Day 1a: Jesper Feddersen Leads

February 04 2013, Matthew Pitt

Day 1a of the 2013 PokerStars.fr European Poker Tour Deauville Main Event drew 307 players, and the end-of-day chip leader was Jesper Feddersen, who finished clear of the field with 188,900 in chips. The PokerStars qualifier finished with a flourish, eliminating Stelyan Georgiev right at play’s end. The Bulgarian called off his stack only to find Feddersen had back-doored into quads.

Afterwards, Feddersen informed the PokerNews Live Reporting Team that this is his third live tournament, having played one last year as practice and the French Poker Series a couple of days ago. Mainly an online player, he qualified on PokerStars after accidentally registering, but now he's top of the pack after Day 1a.

Leading the way for most of the second half of day was Patrick Schuhl, who bagged up 142,700 in chips. His biggest win of the day saw his pocket queens help him to eliminate two players — holding pocket aces and ace-king, respectively — after he made a set on the river.

Other players who will enjoy Monday’s rest day knowing they have a good day’s work in the books are Zimnan Ziiyard (121,000), Christophe Lesage (115,700), Jeff Hakim (114,700), Sergii Baranov (103,800), James Mitchell (102,700) and Team PokerStars Pro Matthias De Meulder (98,300).

Dimitar Danchev, the most recent EPT winner, saw the other side of the variance that exists in this beautiful, yet painful game. He lost a chip-leading pot, and subsequently his tournament life, when his pocket aces were cracked by the pocket kings of Antoine Saout.

He was joined in the locker room by Jon Spinks, Martin Staszko, Nicholas Chouity, David Vamplew, Eugene Katchalov and Marcin Horecki.

The last two on that list were the other two Team PokerStars Pros in action today. Katchalov’s stack headed south from the start, and he never made it back. Horecki had a very up-and-down day. He dropped to 6,000 in chips early on before making a great recovery. Then, he played a pot with the larger-than-life character of Baranov where the latter three-bet preflop and bet every street on a board. Horecki confidently called all the way down only to be shown the by Baranov. His fate was sealed soon after.