We were standing watching the table that Kevin MacPhee is the big stack at, when all hell broke loose. Within seconds, a hoard of cameras, media, and players huddled around the table as Vicky Coren and Celina Lin got their chips into the middle heads up with each other, and each having about the same chip count to start the hand. Fittingly, it was a race:
Lin:
Coren:
"The only two women at the table," someone piped up.
"Yeah, and she has the ladies," someone else said. "Versus ace-king of hearts, too!"
Fellow Team PokerStars Pros Coren and Lin wished each other luck, and they each suggested just chopping the pot right there and moving on to the next hand. They frown on that sort of thing here, however, and it was off to the board:
Lin lost the race, and when the stacks were counted down, it was her 26,400-chip stack that was covered by just 2,000, issuing her the marching orders. She's out, and Coren has doubled up over 50,000.
Jerry Buss raised from the button, making it 2,500 to skate. Both blinds called, including Jasper Te Selle in the big. The flop came , and the action checked to Buss. He moved all in for 16,100 total, and the small blind snap-called. Te Selle ducked out, and the cards were on their backs with Buss at risk.
Showdown
Buss:
Opponent:
Turn: (bink!)
River: irrelevant, as Buss was drawing dead and eliminated from this EPT. It sure was nice to see him over here on this side of the pond, though.
Today the players fell quicker than the raindrops outside on this greying Thursday in London town. 339 players deposited £5,000 into the swelling pot for their chance to take over from Aaron Gustavson, who beat Peter Eastgate heads up last year.
By the end of the day, over half the field were eliminated as the aggression in poker has now reached such a level that many would regard it as simply reckless the way they threw their chips away today.
Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst, Luca Pagano and Lex Veldhuis were all casualties today as were Sorel Mizzi, Chris Moorman and Jeff Madsen. Thomas Bichon is in among the chip leaders with 185,000 while Greg Raymer and Barry Shulman are also still in the mix. The chip leader at the end of the day though is Soheb Porbandarwala with a huge 218,600 and is believed to be the only player over the 200,000 mark.
Full chip counts will be following later tonight while we will be back here tomorrow at 12pm local time for Day 1b, which is expect to get over the 400 mark in terms of runners which would put the tournament in the running for the biggest field in UK poker history.