Roland Israelashvili Bags Biggest WSOPE Mixed Event in History
A total of 42 players bagged up chips at the end of Day 1 of Event #5: €1,650 No-Limit Hold'em/Pot-Limit Omaha Mixed Event, meaning the tournament is just five players off the money.
Of those, 37 players will be guaranteed €2,350, but everyone returning tomorrow for Day 2 will be eyeing up the first-place prize of €86,956 and a WSOP gold bracelet.
On Sunday, there were 241 entries, making this tournament the biggest Mixed Game tournament ever held as part of a World Series of Poker Europe festival, smashing the 158 that played in a £2,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em/Pot-Limit Omaha event at the 2009 WSOPE.
Leading the final 42 is Hungarian Laszlo Bujtas with 388,500. According to Hendon Mob, his last recorded cash came in the 2017 WSOPE Main Event here in Rozvadov, but he'll be hoping to add a cash in another bracelet event come tomorrow.
Other big stacks include Roland Israelashvili (303,000), Julien Sitbon (293,000), Netanel Amedi (277,500), Anthony Zinno (241,000) and Player of the Year leader Shaun Deeb, who was the beneficiary of a last-minute three-way all in between himself, Xixiang Luo and Tomasz Gluszko.
Luo held aces and kings in pot-limit Omaha, but Deeb turned a flush to eliminate both players and send him soaring to the top of the chip counts, only to be pipped by Bujtas. Deeb will still take 367,500 chips through to Day 2.
Several big names are still in contention at the end of Day 1 and will be looking for deep runs ahead of Day 2 which resumes at 2 p.m. local time Monday. They include multiple bracelet winners Jeff Lisandro (57,000), Max Pescatori (161,500), and Chris Ferguson (138,500).
Well-known players to bust on Day 1 included former Main Event champion Ryan Riess, bracelet winners Cord Garcia, Jeff Madsen, Dutch Boyd and Martin Kabrhel, as well as 2018 Little One for One Drop winner Guoliang Wei.
The action continues Monday where the levels will increase to 60 minutes and the plan is to play down to a final table. Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the WSOPE action from the King's Casino in Rozvadov.
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.
