European Poker Tour – London – Day One 'B'

September 23, 2006

Day One 'B' of the London EPT event started, and one thing had noticeably changed from the setup yesterday. They had to make room for the TV stage, so they 'killed' one of the rooms that held 5 or 6 tables yesterday. To make up for this, casino officials also killed some of the casino floor, and put tables there. This made for much more room for everyone (including the players) for the most part, and the vibe was a bit more relaxed.

Bigger names highlighted the action on day one 'B', as Barry Greenstein was over from America to play in his first EPT tournament. Gus Hansen was on hand, as were Joe Hachem, John Gale. Top internet players Betrand 'ElkY' Grosspellier, Steve 'Ackbleh' Day, and Carl 'Colson10' Olson were on hand to play.

The play seemed looser and a bit faster from the starting gun today, as one player, Mats Iremark was eliminated right off the bat when his "nut" flush ran into a straight flush.

One of the early movers on this day was Vanessa Rousso. Vanessa got a guy who was essentially drawing dead to double her up, and she was one of the early chip leaders, with about 33,000 chips when the blinds were still 75/150. Immediately after the dinner break, Vanessa got a little lucky when she called off about 25% of her stack with top pair, only to discover her opponent having an over pair. Vanessa rivered trips, and her stack grew to just under 40,000, clearly one of the biggest stacks in the room.

Barry Greenstein did not fare as well on this day, as the 'Robin Hood of Poker' was short stacked from very early on. Shortly after the dinner break, I saw Barry doing singing a copy of his book for the guy who busted him out, and Barry was off into the London night.

The 'what a great flop…whoops' award goes to Paul 'ActionJack' Jackson, who really liked the flop of 3 10 10 with his pocket threes. He couldn't believe he was getting action on the flop, and eventually all the money went in. His opponent turned over pocket 10s, and ActionJack was all out of action, and out the door.

The 'it ain't over til its over award goes to Katja Thater. Katya got all her money in on the turn with pocket aces on a board of 6 10 4….7. Her opponent had turned a set of sevens, hitting one of his two outs. Katja stood up, and lamented "I can't believe how lucky you are" to her opponent. She was in the middle of the next sentence when an ace fell on the river. Katja was silent and stunned as her opponent passed her about 20,000 chips, and she was up to around 40,000.

Gus Hansen was playing a very interesting strategy for the first 3 or 4 levels. I would estimate that Gus was not at the table for about 50% of the hands. The good news about this strategy is you never lose a hand. Gus is known for doing things his way, but I don't see this strategy paying off in the long term.

Joe Hachem made in interesting move to effectively end his evening. With the blinds at 200/400, Hachem made it 1,200 to go. A late position player made it 4,000. The action came back around to Hachem, and he moved all in. The player took a while, but called with A K. Hachem immediately said 'good call', and showed A 9. The flop brought no help, and Joe was down to about 2,500. The very next hand, Joe moved in with Q J of Hearts, and was called by A Q. That was it for Joe, and he had the rest of the evening to himself.

The payouts were also announced today. The money is definitely focused at the top, with the winner getting £500,000 (just under $950,000), or just under 36% of the announced £1,393,000 prize pool. The worst any player can do is £4,000, or just under $8,000. The top 32 places get paid. The payouts are.

1st £500,000

2nd £285,900

3rd £168,600

4th £110,000

5th £58,600

6th £44,000

7th £36,600

8th £29,300

9th £10,000

10th £10,000

11th £10,000

12th £10,000

13th £10,000

14th £10,000

15th £10,000

16th £10,000

17th £6,000

18th £6,000

19th £6,000

20th £6,000

21st £6,000

22nd £6,000

23rd £6,000

24th £6,000

25th £4,000

26th £4,000

27th £4,000

28th £4,000

29th £4,000

30th £4,000

31st £4,000

32nd £4,000

About midway into level 4, Gus Hansen sat down to play his stack, which at that point was down to about 9,500. By the end of level 6, Gus had it up well over 30,000. Maybe his strategy will work after all.

As the play snuck into the wee hours of the morning, Chad Brown won a huge pot with Aces versus Queens to climb to among the chip leaders.

Vanessa Ruosso's magic ride came to an end when her A K ran into A Q. A flop of A Q 10 had her calling for a jack, but it was not to be for Vanessa, and she was eliminated with about 45 minutes to go in the evening.

The story of the evening was Chad Brown and his magical revue of Aces. With about 45 minutes to go in the evening, Chad took out Gus Hansen's A Q with his second set of pocket aces in about 90 minutes. Then, less than 10 minutes later, Chad took another player out with Aces against A 10 of spades. The aces that all held made Chad the clear chip leader for the day, with over 120,000 chips.

Day One 'B' played down faster than Day One 'A', and when play was halted we were down to 49 players. Below are the final chip counts for all players entering today's play.

Final Chip counts entering Day Two

Chad Brown 127,800

Dean Sanders 117,600

Emad Tahtouh 110,300

Michael Abecassis 87,200

Barny Boatman 87,100

Arshad Hussain 86,600

Daniel Needleman 84,600

Torben Snejbjerg 83,100

Rehne Pedersen 78,500

Michael Muldoon 73,900

Don Odea 71,800

Jules Kuusik 65,800

S j Rutter 61,500

Sid Harris 61,000

Shannon Shorr 60,200

Ivar Rivenaes 60,000

Simon Zach 58,900

Ross Boatman 56,500

Priyanand Hallan 55,800

Tim Flanders 55,500

John Kabbaj 54,100

Jonas Molander 53,300

Alan Glover 53,100

Tom Parker-Bowles 52,100

Samir Shakhtoor 51,700

Damien Lemercier 50,700

Pasi Heinanen 49,600

Erich Kollmann 46,800

Ferenc Bartha 46,200

Alli Mallu 46,100

Ashley Hayles 46,000

David Finney 42,800

Phil Ivey 42,200

Conny Hillbom 41,400

Ryan Fonda 41,000

Katja Thater 40,900

Andrew Bradshaw 38,900

Barkatul Hassan Mohammed 37,800

Chris Hinton 37,200

Jeffrey Rogers 37,200

Adrian Creagh 37,000

George Mckeever 36,900

Alon Huberman 36,800

David Smith 36,800

Anders Jenson 36,200

Isabelle Mercier 36,000

Vik Kanwar 35,200

Andrew Robl 33,700

Samuel Hapak 33,100

Mick Cook 32,900

Michael Ellis 32,800

Victoria Coren 32,000

Oscar Schweinebarth 31,900

K. Graczyk 30,400

Steve Wilsdon 29,500

Kristian Kjondal 29,400

Christopher Convery 28,800

Ram Vaswani 28,300

Femminella Tommaso 28,100

John Persson 27,600

Jeff Buffenbarger 26,900

Joseph Rafferty 26,800

Frank Bastow 25,700

Will Davis 25,300

Alan T M Betson 25,100

Brendan Walls 25,000

Jan Sjavik 24,400

James Akenhead 23,900

Timothy Vance 21,200

M Green 20,900

Joseph Campbell 20,400

Gary Chatterton 20,100

Kevin Parkes 19,800

Lalit Khajuria 19,600

Hans Eskilsson 19,100

Jani Saari 17,500

Neil Channing 17,400

David Bokor 17,300

S Elorfi 17,300

Halldor Sverrison 16,700

Adam Heller 15,800

Peter Hendriks 15,700

Peter Hedlund 15,600

Ricki Nielsen 15,100

Robin Alexis Keston 14,700

William Fitzpatrick 14,500

Frank Callaghan 14,200

J Kimber 14,100

George Bennett 12,900

Michael Wernick 12,600

Frank Pini 12,500

Stefan Oberholzer 12,200

Carl Olson 11,500

Dennis Skaarup 11,100

Vivi Saethren 10,600

David Bergren 10,300

Anthony Adderley 9,600

Lenda Nygren 9,400

Tom Sambrook 8,900

Bengt Sonnert 7,900

Anthony Chessa 7,800