Day 1 of the 2019 PokerStars EPT Prague €2,200 EPT National High Roller saw nearly 18 full levels come and go with 970 entries tallied to generate a total prize pool of €1,862,400. The field was set to play down to 15% in order to make the money, and that number for the hard stop was determined to be when 143 players remained.
When the magic number was reached, Conor Beresford led the way with a stack of 769,000.
Beresford was seen with one of the largest stacks in the room as the day turned to night, eclipsing the half-million mark about three hours before play finished. He continued to climb from there, hitting a high mark of 980,000 at one point after a double knockout, before losing a bit back to finish the day at his resting total.
As for the happenings through the day, players such as Dietrich Fast (508,000), Sam Grafton (451,000), Julien Martini (256,000), Kristin Bicknell (159,000) and Viktor Blom (86,000) all found their ways into Day 2.
Defending champion Yaniv Peretz and PokerStars Ambassadors Fatima Moreira de Melo, Kalidou Sow, and Ramon Colillas were just a few of those to have not made it through the day’s action. Fabrice Soulier also did not advance after his aces were cracked by Bjorn Kozenkai’s king-jack suited in an all-in preflop situation. Kozenkai flopped the nut flush when the flop came ace-high with all clubs, also giving Soulier top set. However, he was unable to improve from there and found himself eliminated from the tournament shortly before the end of the night.
The bubble then loomed near, and hand-for-hand play was called with two eliminations needed to end the night in order to stop rampant stalling that began to occur. A few hands went by with several doubles, with one of which occurring when Claudio Lucchini shoved pocket queens into Simon Brandstrom’s pocket tens. Lucchini held and Brandstrom found himself with just a couple of big blinds.
A few hands later, Brandstrom got all in with king-jack suited and lost to Vladimir Bozinovic’s jack-seven when a seven hit on the turn. Meanwhile, another all-in situation arose at an adjacent table on the same hand. Per Backlund opened from the hijack and called off the rest of his chips when Jose Quintas shoved over him from the button. Backlund had pocket kings and was unable to hold against Quintas’ jack-nine suited after Quintas flopped a nine and backed into a flush, resulting in 145 players becoming 143 in one hand to end the night with eight minutes remaining on the clock in Level 18 (3,000/6,000/6,000).
Simon Brandstrom and Vladimir Bozinovic
The 143 to advance will come back Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. local time to get back at it at the felt, with the play scheduled to continue until a winner has been declared. All who return will have locked up a first-level payout of €3,465 with a full day’s journey ahead between that and the €342,810 that is up top.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be on hand for the entirety of the tournament, so make sure to come back and see who reigns supreme.
