Richter Has Them Quaking in Their Boots
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That's a wrap for Day 1b. After nine levels of play, it came down to the last few hands when Dirk Richter found aces against kings and nines for a 120,000 pot; he then won another big pot to put him up to a monstrous 296,700. The next biggest stack as they bagged and tagged was garrulous Welshman Roberto Romanello on 196,500, just a few thousand chips behind Day 1a chip leader Elias Brussianos.
Today saw a much larger turnout than yesterday - almost double, in fact, and although we didn't quite match last year's field, we weren't far off. In all, 563 players coughed up their €5,000 entry producing a prize pool of €2,730,550. 80 places will pay out, with 80th place getting €8,000 and the top spot paying €640,000.
With the larger field today came a higher number of well-known faces. Among those who didn't make the Day 2 grade were Team PokerStars Pros Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Marcel Luske and Dario Minieri, Nacho Barbero and Ville Wahlbeck. Those who survived the day, however, include a veritable cornucopia of poker talent and TV-friendliness - Laurence "rivermanl" Houghton, Toby Lewis, Kristoffer Thorsson, Liv Boeree, Rob Hollink and Luca Pagano will all be returning to the basement of the Hilton tomorrow in attempt to amass enough chips to make a serious assault on the title.
We'll be back at noon CET. Until then, as they say here in the Czech Republic, dobrou noc.