Earlier this week, the relatively unknown Aaron Pahlawani burst onto the high-stakes PLO scene at the PLO Grand Slam by shipping the first-ever Diamond Poker Series event for €176,100. However, Pahlawani is looking to add another trophy to his collection in the €10,300 PLO Championship, of which the second day kicks off today at 3 p.m.
Pahlawani is among the 37 returning players who survived a Day 1 field of 96 entries. He will return to the tables with a stack of 1,019,000, worth over 100 big blinds, placing him in fifth position on the leaderboard. Pahlawani has to overcome some tough competition if he wants to go back-to-back, however, as PLO crushers such as Alex Livingston, Ka Kwan Lau, and Joni Jouhkimainen surround him in the top ten chip counts, not to mention Harun Ertural, whose 1,488,000 will be the biggest stack at the start of the day.
Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Harun Ertural | Germany | 1,488,000 | 149 |
| 2 | Alex Livingston | Canada | 1,258,000 | 126 |
| 3 | Ka Kwan Lau | Spain | 1,200,000 | 120 |
| 4 | Daniel Montagnolli | Austria | 1,134,000 | 113 |
| 5 | Aaron Pahlawani | Austria | 1,019,000 | 102 |
| 6 | Joni Jouhkimainen | Finland | 911,000 | 91 |
| 7 | Vlado Banicevic | Montenegro | 886,000 | 89 |
| 8 | "Sie Pie" | 772,000 | 77 | |
| 9 | Lautaro Guerra | Spain | 750,000 | 75 |
| 10 | Vadim Zakharyan | Israel | 711,000 | 71 |
Other familiar names at the start of Day 2 include the ever-jovial Imad Derwiche (620,000), Irishman Chris Dowling (473,000), bracelet winners Oleksii Kovalchuk (455,000) and Nikolaos Lampropoulos (377,000), Norwegian high roller regular Tom-Aksel Bedell (256,000), and the short-stacked PLO specialists Gergo Nagy (92,000) and Maksim Shuts (57,000).
The €1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool just needs a few more entries to be reached, and with two levels of late registration to go, it seems all but certain that it will be smashed. Players who want to hop in from the start will begin in Level 10: 5,000/10,000 with a big blind ante of 10,000. Those who reenter during the day or simply like to start later can do so until the start of Level 12: 10,000/15,000 (15,000), which is scheduled for 5:15 p.m. local time.
From Day 2 onward, all levels will be 60 minutes in length and a break will had after every two of them. Day 2 is set to play down to 16 players remaining, who will bag up and return for the finale on Day 3.
Stay tuned to PokerNews as the €10,300 PLO Grand Slam Championship will have its prize pool confirmed and gets in the thick of it on Day 2 of the event.
