Another interesting line-up involves Jani Sointula, young Dutch Pokernews Cup Alpine do-weller Jan Hlobil and Arnaud Mattern sitting in a row. Action is inevitable.
Just now Mattern raised to 2,500 under the gun and it folded all around to Sointula on the small blind, who raised to 21,000 -- almost all in, with just 3,000 left behind. Mattern considered it, but in the end decided that there would be better spots, and passed.
A full double up for Roland Lee as Dario Minieri mistimed one of his trademark bizarre moves. It looks as though Minieri raised from the button and Lee reraised from the small blind. Minieri pushed to cover him and clearly was not expecting the call, as he sheepishly flipped over , well behind Lee's pocket which naturally held up on the board.
Tables are breaking, players and stacks merging, and there have already been quite a few significant changes. Of course there's no change so big as being out of the tournament, as is the case of Daniel Negreanu, Daniel Calabrese and Jose Vazquez Ortega.
Elsewhere super short-stacked Runar Runarsson doubles up against not-quite-as-short Christoffer Egemo, with a painful vs. all in preflop situation. Fate waited until the river to deal the blow which saw Runarsson shout, "Yes!" and then immediately follow it with, "Sorry."
Dag Palovic had a great Day 1, constantly accumulating chips throughout the day. He's right back to the same form on Day 2. On a board of , with a significant number of chips already in the pot, Palovic bet 20,000. His one opponent thought things over for about a minute called and then mucked when Palovic turned over for the flopped trip queens.
Just one table over, Dan Heimiller stood up and left the table as Michael Tureniec scooped in a big pot. It seems that Tureniec, who started the day among the chip leaders, had claimed another victim.
We don't know what cards Ted Lawson was holding, but to us it looked like he may have been making a move. In what started out as a small, unraised pot between Lawson and one opponent, Lawson bet 1,100 on a flop of . Lawson's opponent raised to 2,800, a raise that brought a corresponding reraise by Lawson to 11,100. His aggressive opponent didn't take his foot off the gas. Instead he reraised all in. Lawson was significantly covered, as he had only 20,200 behind the 11,100 chips already on the felt. He took no action for about a minute and then folded his hand.
Michael Greco, whom you may recognise from such popular British soaps as Eastenders (although he's very much moved on to poker these days and probably won't answer to 'Beppe') has somehow nearly tripled his stack in the first level. Shooting up into the top ten in chips with 178,000, the purple Littlewoods shirt-sporting Greco flashed one of his rare smiles at the table.
The action developed very quickly between Ray Rahme and Steve Berdah. Rahme opened for 2,800; Rahme reraised to about 9,000; Rahme jammed all in and Berdah called.
Rahme:
Berdah:
The flop came with an ugly-for-Rahme king, . He found no matching queen on the turn or the river. Rahme remained seated at the table for a few moments after the pot was pushed to Berdah, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had no more chips and was therefore eliminated from the tournament. Then without any prompting he stood up and quietly walked towards the door.
Marcel Luske bet 3,000 on a and followed with another 7,000 after his opponent called and the turn fell . That was the bet that won Luske the pot. He seemed to be in a celebratory mood.
"Just a straight," said Luske with a smile. He opened and collected the pot.
Players have been given a 15-minute break. It seems rather soon for that sort of thing, after just one 75-minute level, but what do we know? A break sounds good to us!