Lambros Vrakas Leads After WSOPC Main Event Day 1a
Four months since the World Series of Poker’s International Circuit graced the doors of the largest card room in Europe, it’s back and the festival has almost reached its conclusion with the €1,650 Main Event getting underway today.
At the end of the day’s 12 levels, Lambros Vrakas topped the chip counts with 249,500 at the WSOPC Main Event Day 1a at King's Casino Rozvadov.
He handed a chunk of his chips over to Said El Yousfi in level one when his open-ended royal flush draw didn’t get there against the trip kings of El Yousfi, but he continued to move up the counts.
Later Vrakas eliminated former EPT Barcelona champion Sebastian Malec in a nasty set-over-set situation, before pushing his chips around to gain the maximum from top pair against Andreas Puhl.
| # | Player | Chip count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lambros Vrakas | 250,000 |
| 2 | Gennady Kalin | 170,000 |
| 3 | Marek Fritz | 150,000 |
| 4 | Zoltan Ban | 130,000 |
| 5 | Edin Alijagic | 120,000 |
| 6 | Michael Goosens | 116,000 |
| 7 | Sam Grafton | 100,000 |
| 8 | Marcel Baskharon | 100,000 |
| 9 | Jan Bednar | 95,000 |
| 10 | Achour Badal | 95,000 |
Back at the first of two starting flights, players were allowed up to one re-entry per flight. Over the course of the day, several players exercised that option, with Marek Tatar, Catalin Pop and Soenke Jahn among them.
With the festival’s High Roller reaching a conclusion today, Pierre Neuville, Martin Kabrhel, Vojtech Ruzicka, Dzmitry Urbanovich and Aleksandar Tomovic were all in action away from the Main Event. Those players are expected to enter tomorrow, but there were a whole host of other names in the Main Event field.
Brits Sam Grafton and Kuljinder Sidhu joined the field with El Yousfi, who picked up four second-place finishes at last month’s Marrakech Poker Open including a second place in the High Roller, along with Jerome Sgorrano, who finished fifth in that event.
A whole host of other big stacks litter the field including Grzegorz Idziak (207,700), Marcia Chemielewski (183,700) Michal Jurcenko (161,100) and Gennady Kallin (153,100).
They will return on Sunday for Day 2 as part of the 104 Day 1a survivors. Notables in that field include Grafton (20,100), Sidhu (95,400) and Ismael Bojang (49,600).
A full chip count of all players advancing to Day 2 will be published before the start of Day 1b.
Day 1b starts Saturday at 2 p.m. local time, with 12 levels scheduled. Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the live updates.
Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German. He also holds an NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism.
