End of Day 1a
So after a delayed start to the first day of this tournament, the players are finally bagging up at the end of nine grueling levels of play. The chip leader appears to be Leonid Bilokur, a Russian who won the €2,000 side event at the EPT in Berlin last year. He sits with 187,900 which looks to be above anyone else's stack at this time, former chip leader Alessandro Adinolfo lost a big pot at the end of the day to Ramzi Jelassi which has most likely cost him the chip lead.
Other players who have managed to make it through the day include Kevin Vandersmissen, Martins Adeniya and Pieter de Korver. However we lost many good players today including former EPT winners Anton Wigg and Michael Eiler, while the 2009 EPT San Remo champion Constant Rijkenberg also failed to survive the day's play.
Tomorrow we'll be expecting even more players including last year's winner Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree. Also involved will be Kevin MacPhee, Sandra Naujoks, Sebastian Ruthenberg and WSOP Main Event Champion Jonathan Duhamel as well as local hopes Luca Pagano and Dario Minieri.
At the moment, we don't have a fully defined start time but we have been told that it will be after 1.30pm CET. In that case we will look to that as our start time until we hear differently.
Until then, we'll see you tomorrow!