Paez Claims Day 1 Chip Lead; 81 Players Will Return for Day 2 of the French National High Roller
With 18 minutes and 8 seconds of Level 17 left on the clock, the bubble burst in the €2,200 French National High Roller when Alan Lau eliminated Roland Chassing to reduce the field down to 81 players who will return on Monday, April 30 at 12:30 PM in the Americas Room in the Monte Carlo Bay Resort & Hotel. Claiming the chip lead on Day 1 of the Event #11 of the 2019 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT here in Monaco is Raul Paez with 578,000 in chips.
Paez collected most of those chips when he clashed with Haoxiang Wang and Osman Aksu. In a pot that contained almost 430,000, Paez shoved on a big bet of Aksu on which Aksu ended folding. The crowd that swarmed the table all looked on the action with amazement as this huge pot was being played out close to the bubble. Paez had some competition from Borge Sandsgaard, Julien Mariani, and Marius Kudzmanas during the last hour or so but he still finished at the top of the chip counts.
Following him in the chip counts are Sandsgaard with 503,000, Julien Mariani with 480,000, Nariman Yaghmai with 472,000, and Lau with 462,000 after bursting the bubble. Kudzmanas had won the €1,100 Freezeout two nights ago and is looking for another deep run in this event. Even though he was chip leading the tournament at one point, two penalties and some hands later, he lost a lot of those chips again and finished the tournament with 443,000 in his bag.
Other players who have made it through to Day 2 with an above average stack include David Peters (409,000), Sonny Franco (382,000), Julien Martini (303,000), Dietrich Fast (268,000), Harry Lodge (226,000), and Anson Tsang (221,000). Kristen Bicknell, Dario Sammartino, Gaelle Baumann, Royston Drenthe, Paul Newey, Leo Margets, Maria Ho, Chin Wei Lim, Christopher Frank, and Erwann Pecheux have also made it through but have some work to do to get their stack to above average.
Unfortunately, not everyone was lucky enough to win their all-ins, the already star-studded field lost players like the PokerStars Ambassadors Maria Konnikova, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Kalidou Sow, and Celina Lin all left the stage without cashing. Other notable players failing to cash in this event include Orpen Kisacikoglu, Alexandru Papazian, Nicolas Chouity, Martins Adeniya, Mustapha Kanit, Ben Heath, Joey Weissman, Florian Duta, Maria Lampropulos, Manig Loeser, Dominik Nitsche, and many others. The defending champion, Dimitry Shchepkin was doing well at the start of the day but couldn’t be found at the tables any more during the latter part of the day.
There were 538 entries collected in total with 110 reentries creating a total prize pool of €1,076,000. The winner will walk away with €200,400 and when the 81 remaining players return at 12:30 PM local time, they are all guaranteed to cash for at least €3,450. Make sure to return as the tournament will play down to a winner and the PokerNews live reporting team will be there to tell who it will be!
board and had to wait for all activity on the other tables to complete. Once the other tables were done, all three players were instructed to open their cards.
for ace high with the pair of fours on the board. Freund tabled 
and Chassing happily slammed the table but didn't see Lau's hand who held 
for the flopped pair of nines. When Chassing realized what had happened and when the dealer announced that everyone else was in the money, Chassing got up from his chair while the rest of the field applauded and quickly bagged up their chips.
, Reskallah continued with a bet of 20,000 which Bicknell called.
on the turn and the 
on the river.
.
to pick up the pot indeed.
to not provide any help to Loeser as he was eliminated.
for Izutsu's pocket jacks to hold and eliminate both of his opponents.
, Shchepkin continued with a bet of 3,500 which Rozel called.
and Shchepkin barreled another bet over the line, now for 7,000. Rozel called again.
for a straight. Shchepkin said he had a straight too.
