888poker Live Bucharest Main Event Surpasses Guarantee; Purice Finishes on Top of Day 1b
Once the action for Day 1b of the 2018 888poker LIVE Bucharest €888 Main Event got underway, the signs were written on the wall that it was going to be a busy day in the Grand Ballroom of the stunning JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel. More than 120 players were in there seats within half an hour and the attendance of Day 1a was surpassed already.
More and more players kept pouring into the tournament area, some of which took more than just one shot at glory in the flagship event of the festival in cooperation with Pokerfest Romania, which boasts a €288,000 guaranteed prize pool. Once the registration had closed, the tournament screens showed massive 281 entries and it was already certain that the initial guarantee was easily beaten with now 391 entries. On top of that, the Turbo Day 1c kicked off at 11 p.m. when the remaining 69 survivors of Day 1b had just bagged up their chips and at least 50 further entries were already registered at that point as well.
At the very end of the night it was a close race for the chip lead between Tudor Purice (435,500) and Ivan Stankov (398,000), which the former won. Other big stacks at the end of Day 1b include Krzysztof Chmielowski (295,500), Radu Pitic (273,500), Iulian Iacob (243,000), Sergiu Cornea (232,000), Dan Murariu (188,500), Bogdan Berinde (163,000) and Federico Petruzzelli (141,000).
Purice entered the tournament late and managed to quickly run up a stack after scooping several big pots. In the final level of the night, Purice then won a big three-way all in with pocket nines against the pocket deuces of Danut Chisu and the jack-eight suited of Marius-Alexandru Gicovanu. Just prior to that another big three-way all in took place over on the feature table and Stankov with pocket queens cracked the pocket aces of Natan Grossman, short stack Riad Chahaf was caught in the crossfire of the big stacks with ace-four.
Two 888poker ambassadors took to the felt on Day 1b in Sofia Lovgren and Natalie Hof. Lovgren had to re-enter and busted in a three-way all in with ace-ten suited versus ace-king suited and pocket kings soon after the feature table live stream had kicked off. Hof peaked at 120,000 throughout the day and spent the final two levels of the night on the live stream table, bagging up 87,500.
Only around one fourth of the field made it through in the penultimate day and several familiar faces fell short, but may still book their seat for Day 2 in the Turbo Heat 1c. Among them were Marius Pertea, Pokerfest CEO Sorin Constantinescu, Cosmin Nedelea, Jeroen Aarts, Viliyan Petleshkov, Ionel Anton, Pasquale Grimaldi, Alexandru Farcasanu, Stefanita Fechete, Catalin Paul Diac, Silviu Baltateanu and Evangelos Bechrakis.
Cuceanu Wins Ladies Event and 888poker LIVE Barcelona package
There were a total of 26 entries in the €50+10 Ladies Event and the top five spots took home a portion of the €1,222 prize pool, all of which were taken by local players from Romania. Carmen Zainescu, who won the last Ladies Event in the Grand Ballroom, had to settle for second place while Maria Cuceanu took home €500 and a package for 888poker LIVE Barcelona with a value of €1,880.
1st place: Maria Cuceanu (€500)
2nd place: Carmen Zainescu (€317)
3rd place: Katalin Barta (€180)
4th place: Iulia Afanasiev (€125)
5th place: Oana Penescu (€100)
All survivors of the three starting days of the Main Event will return to the tables of the Grand Ballroom on Sunday, March 4th 2018, at 1 p.m. local time and the action on the penultimate tournament day recommences with level 12 and blinds of 1,500/3,000 and a running ante of 500. The full chip counts and seat draw for Day 2 will be published in the morning right here on PokerNews.
flop gave Stankov top set while Grossman only had one out or running straight cards, Chahaf picked up a gutshot. The 
turn and 
river were blanks and Stankov shot up to the top of the leader board.
and Purice sent two opponents on the rail while skyrocketing to the top of the counts.
, Hans Fest faced a bet of 8,000 by Dan Murariu and moved all in for 31,700 to pick up a quick call by Murariu, while the third player in the hand folded.
flushed an opponent with 
. Right after he got his stack in from the small blind with the 
and Strachinescu paired his ace to bust Grimaldi. Silviu Baltateanu, who had been back up to 70,000 after he was left with 3,500 earlier, has also been eliminated.
for 59,300 as second biggest stack in the hand.
.
. Jarvisalo had flopped the straight with 
