Day 1 of the 2012 PokerStars.com EPT Barcelona €10,000 High Roller has come and gone. It was a short day on the felt as play was halted early due to the Barcelona versus Real Madrid match tonight that many of the players were headed off to. After a total of 111 entries were tallied, 76 of them remained at the end of the night. Leading the way was Taylor Paur with 220,400 in chips.
Of those to play this event were Team PokerStars Pros Jonathan Duhamel, Angel Guillen, Jason Mercier, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Pius Heinz and Martin Staszko. Mercier was forced to quickly use his single reload after busting on the first hand he played, but went on to finish with 48,100. Of that bunch, Duhamel bagged the most chips with 140,100 in his bag at the end of the night.
Other notables to finish with solid stack sizes were Jean Noel Thorel (193,600), JC Alvarado (181,600) and Igor Kurganov (151,000).
The top 12 spots are planned to be paid out, with €359,000 going to the winner. Play is scheduled to resume tomorrow at 1:00 PM local time. The plan will be to play down to the final table before calling it quits. PokerNews will be on hand for all of the live updates, so be sure to join us then for the coverage.
The Main Event is well on the way, but here we'll be concentrating on the €10,000 High Roller which should see the likes of Team PokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Jonathan Duhamel and Angel Guillen, along with many others, battling it for hundreds of thousands of Euros.
In this event, players will be starting with 50,000 in chips and anyone unlucky enough to be knocked out in the first four levels will have the chance to reload, but only one reload is allowed.
Last year, this event had 58 entries with nine re-loads, with Philipp Gruissem taking home €234,500 for first place. The German has an excellent history in the high stakes tournaments with two wins, a third and a fourth in €10,000 events last year as well as third place in the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final €25,000 High Roller.
The tournament will be stopping tonight at 9:00 PM due the fact that many of the players planning to play the tournament also plan to go to the Barcelona versus Real Madrid "Super Cup" match tonight. In the meantime, we'll be looking at playing six or seven levels. The first two levels will run two hours in length each, before all subsequent levels drop to one hour in length.
Play will begin at 1:00 PM local time (CET) and you can find all the updates right here on PokerNews.
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