Main Event
Day 1A Started
2010 PokerStars.net EPT Barcelona
Main Event
Day: 1a
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2010 PokerStars.net EPT Barcelona
Buy-in
€5,000
Prize Pool
€3,790,000
Entries
758
Level
31
Blinds
80,000 / 160,000
Ante
20,000
Barceloooooooona!
![[user46392]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
Good morning and welcome to the Casino de Barcelona.
Gaudi, Picasso, Dali - all great Catalan artists, but none of them quite so talented when it comes to playing cards. Carter Phillips, on the other hand, proved himself the King of Catalunya last year when he qualified twice for this event and then bested the other 477 runners to take it down for €850,000. Phillips has qualified online again this year, and is one of the folks expected to play today.
Also expected to join him at the felt today are Team PokerStars Pros Ville Wahlbeck, Lex Veldhuis and Arnaud Mattern, Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo and current occupier of the EPT leaderboard Fernando Brito.
Play is due to start at noon local time, in around half an hour, so don't wander too far from your computer screens. We'll be back shortly.
Anticipation!
As we walk around the main lobby we can literally feel the nerves in the air. Most people are wandering around on their own taking sips of the complimentary water and freshly squeezed orange juice.
At the front of the main lobby Spanish Football Star and Friend of Pokerstars Poli Rincón is signing copies of his new book. There are a few people in line but he is vying for attention with the poker tables lining the main hall so he is up against it.
A few minutes ago the main hall was full of empty tables and bored looking dealers. Now they are full of shade wearing, hoodie wearing and I Pod wearing wannabee's and you can feel the buzz of anticipation. The room is cool and the light that permeates the air comes from four huge chandeliers dangling from the high ceiling.
As we walk in between the masses of people riffling chips, the sounds of Kasabian fill the air and the plasma screens come alive with the images of previous EPT winners. I have no doubt for a moment they grabbed the attention of most of the people in the room and for a fleeting second they crossed their fingers and made their own wish.
Good luck at the tables were the final words spread across the plasma screens and as the music ended Tournament Director Thomas Kremser began the tournament.
Level: 1
Blinds: 50/100
Ante: 0
Who's Here On Time?
An assortment of the folks who made it here for the shuffle-up-and-deal.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
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30,000 | |
|
30,000 |
Team PokerStars In The House
Team PokerStars are well represented here at Day 1A of EPT Barcelona. A quick scout around the room reveals Matthias De Meulder (Belgium), Michael Kenier (Germany), Alexandre Gomes (Brazil), and Juan Manuel Pastor, the latter being on home soil here in Spain.
Pastor has four EPT cashes to his name but an outright win still eludes him. Can he change that at the Casino de Barcelona?
Henrique Pinho
Team Pokerstars Pro, Portugal, Henrique Pinho has arrived for the Day 1a festivities and he has found some action in the first few hands that unfortunately has resulted in a loss of a few chips.
In hand 1 we caught up with Pinho in the big blind and there was one limper in the pot. The flop was 
and Pinho lead out with a bet of 250 and took the pot down.
In the 2nd hand Pinho, who is wearing a black woollen hat with earphones draped around his neck, found the action at his doorstep when it folded around to him in the small blind. He opened up with a raise to 275 and the big blind finds a three bet, making it 600 to play - Pinho makes the call. The flop is 
and both players check. The turn is the 
and Pinho leads out with a bet of 725. The player in the big blind, who has his hands covering his mouth, takes them down, grabs some chips and makes the raise to 1,500. Pinho wasn't expecting it and after riffling two piles of green chips for a while he eventually surrendered the hand.
Table Watch
A few interesting tables are beginning to emerge in the sizable ballroom (in a shift from last year, the tournament has moved out of the casino proper and into the rather roomier annexe).
Smack in the middle of the room is a most intriguing table, featuring as it does French powerhouse Alain Roy, WPT Amneville winner Sam El Sayed, last year's EPT Barcelona eighth place finisher Georgios Kapalas, the man at the top of the leaderboard Fernando Brito, and Team PokerStars Pro Darus Suharto.
Across the room, there's potential for an equally impressive table. Leo Margets and EPT Tallinn winner Kevin Stani are seated at the same felt - but at the moment they are the only two players at that table, and since the rules require that three people are seated before dealing commences, they are mostly staring into space at the moment.
At This Stage It Does Not Mattern
Most of the players are busy testing the waters, seeing who is aggressive and who they can push around. One man who has been bitten early on is Team PokerStars Pro Arnaud Mattern, who has taken a big hit to his stack and currently sits on 12,750 chips.
Details on how he lost more than half of his stack are scarce but it appears the main beneficiary to Mattern's demise seems to be Wayne Scott, who is seated two players to Mattern's left.
Even with "only" 12,750 chips, Mattern has almost 130 big blinds so there is no need for the Frenchman to worry just yet.
If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again!
EPT Vienna was a fantastic tournament and some of the notable players who made a deep run for glory have returned to the Casino de Barcelona with that thirst for glory.
We have two final tablists from Vienna in the form of Luca Cainelli and Matthias Lotze and we also have the man from Panama Jose Severino who has just made a group of people’s day. There are scatterings of missing seats where people have obviously been partying too hard the night before or are just too Goddam good and don’t need to turn up on time. One such table has a paltry three people on it and they were desperate to play but couldn’t until a minimum of seven players took their seats. That seventh person who took his seat was Jose Severino and he put a smile on everyone’s faces.
We caught up with a hand with Lotze. There was a raise from under the gun by a guy who looked completely disinterested. He made it 250 to play and the action folded around to Lotze in the big blind and he made the call. We were looking to see if the flop would put a smile on the raisers face but it didn’t. It was 
and they both checked. The turn was the 
and Lotze lead out with a bet of 300 and the disinterested player called. The river was 
bringing a four flush to the board and the both checked it down and the disinterested player took the pot down.
Lotze: 
Disinterested player: 
