Max Greenwood started the day out with a short stack, and he did not managed to mount a comeback. Byron Kaverman told us how it was Haralabos Voulgaris who had raised from the cutoff seat before Greenwood shoved from the small blind.
Greenwood's all-in shove was for about 55,000, and Voulgaris made the call holding . Greenwood was at risk with , but he couldn't hit and was eliminated.
Igor Kurganov opened from under the gun, and Connor Drinan made the call. Viacheslav Goryachev squeezed to 45,000 from the small blind, and Isaac Haxton picked up queens and shoved all in for about 180,000 from the big blind. Kurganov and Drinan folded, but Goryachev made the call with two kings. Haxton failed to improve and hit the rail.
"What do you think is more likely, that I miscounted five times last night, or that something went wrong today?" Ben Tollerene frustratedly said to the tournament staff.
When we arrived on the scene, a dispute was going on involving the high-stakes poker player and the tournament staff. Tollerene claimed he counted his chips at 647,000 before play started. Last night, according to Tollerene's chip bag, the professional wrote that he bagged up 671,500 in chips, and that created a difference of 24,500 chips.
Before play resumed, tournament dealers and staff put the bags in the correct seats after doing the table draw. Then, a few minutes before play began, every bag was to be opened. Players that arrived on time had the chance to open their own bag, but Tollerene was just a few minutes late. The dealer who was present had opened Tollerene's bag, after which she performed a chip race to get rid of the T500 denomination chips.
After the chip race, the chips collected were placed in the well and were still present when Tollerene arrived at the table. The tournament staff explained to Tollerene numerous times that there was nothing they could do, as no chips had left the table after the bags were opened.
Tollerene kept shaking his head in a bit of frustration, believing he had counted his stack correctly the night before. Martin Kabrhel and Patrik Antonius continuously emphasized that the clock was ticking and action must start. With that, play began at the table and Tollerene started out with less than he thought.
Jason Mercier min-raised the cutoff seat to 12,000, and Hassan Fares made the call in the big blind. The flop came , and Fares check-called Mercier's continuation bet of 13,000.
The on the turn prompted both players to check, then a fourth heart popped up on the river with the . Fares checked again, then tanked for a bit after Mercier first a 37,000-chip river bet. Fares eventually called, and Mercier had to table the for not much of anything. Fares showed the and took it down.
Remko Rinkema and Donnie Peters are in Spain for the start of Season 12 of the European Poker Tour, and discuss the already record-breaking EPT Barcelona.
And don't forgot, fans can call in and leave a voicemail for the crew at 774-77-PNPOD.
Registration is open for just a few more minutes, but we can already confirm some new players.
Yesterday's late-night satellite generated five tickets. Andrey Andreev, Andrew Chen, and November Niner Ofer Zvi Stern qualified and will start Day 2 with 250,000. David Peters and Connor Drinan also won tickets, but they already had stacks in the event from Day 1 (497,000 for Peters, 474,500 for Drinan), so they received €50,000 in prize money.
On top of that, JC Alvarado and Martin Kabrhel have reentered after busting yesterday, and Vladimir Troyanovskiy also joined right before registration closed.
The music kept on skipping yesterday, as records were constantly broken on Day 1 of the €50,000 Super High Roller. A staggering 93 entries were generated from 81 unique players and 12 reentries, shattering last year's total of 77. After the first eight one-hour levels of play, 66 remained with one of UK's finest, Stephen Chidwick, leading the charge with over 1 million in chips from the 250,000-chip starting stack.
While familiar faces like Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, and Scott Seiver were missing, as well as last year's champion Olivier Busquet and runner-up Daniel Colman, a lot of players that never played a €50,000 event before showed up. For example, there was Ben "Ben86" Tollerene, Luuk "pokerkluka" Gieles, Philippe "takechip" D'Auteuil, and Scott "Aggro Santos" Margereson in the field, and all of them made it through to Day 2.
Registration will remain open till start of play today, which will be at 12:30 p.m. local time, so new players might sign up and old ones might reenter. After Day 1 finished yesterday, there was a "reverse freeroll" held that gave players the chance to win their €50,000 buy-in back if they were still in, or qualify for another bullet if they weren't. A total of five seats were handed out in that one, though we're unsure who the lucky players were at this time.
The plan for today is to play 10 levels or down to a final table of eight, whichever comes first. Buying in now gives you a fresh stack of 250,000, and that's good for just over 41 big blinds with the first level of play at 3,000/6,000 with a 1,000 ante.
Here's the structure for today:
Level
Small Blind
Big Blind
Ante
9
3,000
6,000
1,000
10
4,000
8,000
1,000
--
Break
20 minutes
--
11
5,000
10,000
1,000
12
6,000
12,000
2,000
--
Break
20 minutes
--
13
8,000
16,000
2,000
14
10,000
20,000
3,000
--
Break
75 minutes
--
15
12,000
24,000
3,000
16
15,000
30,000
4,000
--
Break
20 minutes
--
17
20,000
40,000
5,000
18
25,000
50,000
5,000
The table draw will be released as soon as registration closes, as to not give newcomers the advantage of knowing what table they might end up, and when it is available we'll post it. The prize pool will also be confirmed at that time.
While you wait, check out Sarah Herring's interview with Fedor Holz:
PokerNews.com will be on site from start to finish, reporting on the first flop till the last river, so be sure to stay glued to these pages.
. Greenwood was at risk with 
, but he couldn't hit and was eliminated.
, and Antonius exited the tournament area.
, and Fares check-called Mercier's continuation bet of 13,000.
. Fares checked again, then tanked for a bit after Mercier first a 37,000-chip river bet. Fares eventually called, and Mercier had to table the 
for not much of anything. Fares showed the 
and took it down.
