Book It: Day 1b is History
It was a good day to be a poker fan with a whole hoard of pros in the room. Team PokerStars was very strongly represented as you might expect when their name is emblazoned on every chip in the room. The list of those who played is a veritable who's-who in the international poker world: Dario Minieri, Luca Pagano, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Noah Boeken, Alexander Kravchenko, and Johnny Lodden were among more than a dozen Team Pros who came out for this second flight.
Also joining us was tennis legend Boris Becker, though his day only lasted about half as long as he would have liked. The 2008 WSOP final table was represented here as well, but not by Peter Eastgate. Darus Suharto, a "friend of PokerStars" made the trip over to play. Huck Seed, Sorel Mizzi, Vitaly Lunkin, and Praz Bansi are just a few of the other names you'd have recognized today, but the list of notables is far too long to mention in one go.
With the action progressing at a good clip, many of the big names have already fallen by the wayside. Like Ilari Sahamies, for example. The nosebleed online grinder who lives as "Ziigmund" arrived about five hours late for play. He sucked out to triple up on the very first hand of his tournament, but he would lose all 60,000 of his chips within the next couple orbits. Back to Rail Heaven for Ziiggy.
Also failing to escape Day 1b were EPT regulars Carter Phillips, Dragan Galic, Asa Smith, and Benny Spindler, as well as defending champion Salvatore Bonavena.
On the flip side of things, there's a hell of a battle going on for the overnight chip lead. We were booted from inside the ropes with about 15 minutes on the clock, so the horse race will be too close to call for now. Five men are all in strong contention for the pole position with more than 150,000: Marius Heiene, Rifat Palevic, Fionn MacNamara, Eilev Andreas, and PokerStars' own ElkY. We'll have to wait for the full chip counts before we can be certain who's on top of the heap, but it figures to be one of those five.
So that's all for Day 1b then. The survivors from these two Day 1's will join together for tomorrow's Day 2. Play kicks off at precisely noon-or-so C.E.T. on Thursday, and we expect to see you right back here as we press on towards the money.
Until then, goodnight from Prague.