Gassian Leads and Spragg Bags Big After Day 1a of the £1,100 UKIPT Main Event
The first flight of the £1,100 UKIPT Main Event at the PokerStars European Poker Tour London in the Hilton Park Lane hotel has come to an end for the day after close to 14 hours of play.
The flight attracted 344 total entries and played down to 52 before the remaining players bagged up their chips to advance to Day 2.
Leading the way of the remaining players was David Gassian who bagged up 577,000. He was spotted with a large stack in the middle part of the day before he slumped back down in the pack before a late-night surge propelled him to the chip lead as the night ended.
Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
| Position | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Gassian | France | 577,000 | 96 |
| 2 | Julien Sitbon | France | 560,000 | 93 |
| 3 | Robin Scheidegger | Switzerland | 465,000 | 78 |
| 4 | Nicola D'Anselmo | Italy | 398,000 | 66 |
| 5 | Alex Peffly | United Kingdom | 396,000 | 66 |
| 6 | Danny Pyke | United Kingdom | 390,000 | 65 |
| 7 | Abu Khalek | United Kingdom | 368,000 | 61 |
| 8 | Dan Laidlow | United Kingdom | 309,000 | 52 |
| 9 | Benjamin Spragg | United Kingdom | 300,000 | 50 |
| 10 | Adrian Cazacu | Romania | 297,000 | 50 |
Clipping Gassian’s heels in second place was French player Julien Sitbon who ended the night with 560,000 after having the lead for most of the night after dinner break before Gassian’s surge.
Robin Scheidegger (465,000), Nicola D’Anselmo (398,000) and Alex Peffly (396,000) rounded out the top five chip counts.
None other than PokerStars team pro Benjamin Spragg had a nice Day 1a as he collected a healthy stack of 300,000, which ended up being the ninth largest in the flight.
Among others to advance were, Victoria Livschitz (223,000), Antoine Labat (118,000) and Henrik Hecklen who barely slipped into the money with a short stack of 35,000.
The money bubble was breached early in Level 17 as John Eames became the bubble boy when his pocket nines were out-flopped. Eames will have to join Landon Tice, Kayhan Mokri and Barny Boatman as a few of the players who will need to enter again in order to advance to Day 2 after their Day 1a attempt was unsuccessful.
PokerNews will be back on the felt tomorrow for Day 1c at noon local time here in London as this exciting opening event will roll on.
showing as the winning hand against the 
of Henrik Hecklen.
as the dealer counted down the chips and cut away a large portion of Hecklen's stack to move toward Gassian.
was clean for McClean's pocket pair, doubling up through Souki.
runout to put Lijo all in.
for a straight, and Lijo showed a 
as he mucked his hand and left the table.
flop, with Khalek then leading out for 17,000 on the 
. The pot had about 38,000 in the middle.
, which Peffly had pipped with the 
changed nothing, and Harry quickly recovered his lost chips while Jordon was preparing to reenter.
