A nice early pot for cheerful Welshman (despite his Italianate name) Roberto Romanello. He check-raised a flop to 2,500, and his opponent, after some thought, called. Come the turn, Romanello bet out a chunky 3,500, and his opponent now disappeared into the tank for some time. During this time I was distracted by Thierry van den Berg at the next table complaining to PokerStars press doyenne Mad Harper that he had been turned away from his hotel three times owing to some interesting attempts at spelling his name before they had finally relented. Oops. Nevertheless, when I turned back around, Romanello's opponent had folded, and Romanello was raking in the pot.
The big board in the tournament room shows 599 players in the field today. That's not an official number yet, and we're not sure if that's how many started or how many are left (at least one or two tables have already been broken), but it looks like the total number of players for this €5,300 tournament will be just short of 1,200. By any measure that's a smashing success.
One of the things that we noticed right away today is that the players were given completely different chips than the players were given yesterday. We asked the tournament staff why this would be the case and were informed that the chips in use today are the regular EPT chips. They weren't used yesterday simply because they didn't arrive at the venue in time to be used. One can idly speculate what the reason for the delay might be -- lost baggage, weather delays, and strikes in France all seem equally plausible -- but it seems that these will be the chips used for the rest of the tournament.
Like we said, there are really too many tables to strike fear into your average qualifier's heart to mention, but here are a few of the more frightening so far:
Calm yourself ladies, there's no marital strife yet, but TD Thomas Kremser has decided that Mr. and Mrs. Antonius should not be seated at the same table. Maya has been moved to a seat at a table directly behind Evelyn Ng, giving players in that area two beauties with which to distract themselves.
We have the legendary Irish Open maestro Liam Flood and technically English but played-for-Ireland international football star Tony Cascarino flying the flag for Ireland, while nipping over to the UK we have EPT Baden champion Julian Thew, WSOPE runner-up John Tabatabai, soap-star-turned-poker-pro Michael Greco and UK circuit regular Steve Jelinek. Jelinek in particular is happy to be here -- yesterday he couldn't even get into the room to register for the waiting list, but in what he calls his, "Best bluff of the week so far," he snuck his way to the front of the queue and bagged himself a seat.
Quite frankly we have more big names here than will fit into a post, so check out the chip counts page during the next half hour or so for an overview of our extraordinary field.
The Antonius Table
We're slowly making our way through the massive field, trying to pick out the notable players. We've already spotted several Team PokerStars Pros, including Peter Eastgate, Hevad Khan and Isabelle Mercier; Patrik and Maya Antonius, who somehow managed to draw the same table (along with Bill Chen); and Marcel Luske. That's only a small sampling of the players here. A few stragglers are still shuffling to their seats and -- to be honest -- yesterday there were players in the field that we didn't spot for several levels. It's just not that easy when there are 600 people jammed in the room.
It takes a long time to get 600 players into the tournament room and seated, but that feat has finally been accomplished. After a few brief opening remarks, cards are in the air.
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flop to 2,500, and his opponent, after some thought, called. Come the 
turn, Romanello bet out a chunky 3,500, and his opponent now disappeared into the tank for some time. During this time I was distracted by Thierry van den Berg at the next table complaining to PokerStars press doyenne Mad Harper that he had been turned away from his hotel three times owing to some interesting attempts at spelling his name before they had finally relented. Oops. Nevertheless, when I turned back around, Romanello's opponent had folded, and Romanello was raking in the pot.
