Day 1a in the Bag; Huge Day 1b Likely in Store For Tomorrow

Day 1a of the PokerStars.com EPT Barcelona is nine levels old, and we've already seen a pretty fine turnout for the opening day. A total of 346 players showed up to the Casino de Barcelona to play Day 1a, and several hundred more are expected tomorrow. Betting the over on last year's record of 758 seems like the correct side of the action right now, but Day 1b will tell us for certain.

Among the Day 1a crowd were a solid cross-section of the Team PokerStars family. The host country, Spain sent Juan Maceiras and newly-minted Team Pro Ana Marquez to the felt, and they were joined by an international crowd that included Andre Akkari, Vanessa Selbst, Theo Jorgensen, Alex Kravchenko, Lex Veldhuis, and Sebastian Ruthenberg, among others.

The early stages of the day -- as is often the case -- belonged to Vanessa Selbst alone. Right out of the starting gate, Selbst began taking her table to task, and she was up over 170,000 -- nearly six times the starting stack -- before the dinner break! She cooled off a bit through the middle stages, then rebounded, then dropped again to finish with 81,500 chips into the bag here at night's end. The Team Pros who are still flush with chips include Sebastian Ruthenberg, Andre Akkari, and Ville Wahlbeck.

While some have gone out to the bar to celebrate a successful day, others were already gathered there much earlier as they drowned away the sorrows of Day 1a. Pierre Neuville (who brought along some amazing Belgian chocolates for the media today) had a particularly bad go of it. Very early on, all the money went in on the river, and Neuville's full house had been one-outed by quad fives to rob him of most of his chips. The rest of his stack went soon thereafter, and Neuville was joined on the rail by the likes of Johnny Lodden, Veldhuis, Martin Hruby, and Sandra Naujoks. Both halves of the Spanish contingent -- Marquez and Maceiras -- were also eliminated during the last third of the day. Apart from the PokerStars family, we also lost a big group of notable players like Joe Ebanks, Davidi Kitai, former EPT Grand Final champion Nicolas Chouity, Jake Cody, and last year's EPT Player of the Year, Fernando Brito.

At the end of today's nine levels, everyone's chasing Martin Schleich, though. The PokerStars player appears to be holding the top spot with his count of 182,100, and we'll peg him as our tentative overnight chip leader. The board shows about 179 players left. The survivors will have the day off tomorrow, but they'll be back here at noon on Monday for the combined Day 2.

First, though, we've got a Day 1b to get through, and that will kick of at high noon tomorrow with a big, fresh new set of faces.

Until tomorrow, all that's left is goodnight!