Noah Boeken has taken a seat next to David Boyaciyan on table 25 with plenty of notables on it.
Over on table 22, Richard Milne and Mortensen Mortensen are sitting next to each other. Both had final-tabled the €1,500 reentry tournament yesterday where the Dane finished third, Milne took 6th and Georgios Zisimopoulos is also in albeit on another table.
It started rather innocent with a raise to 300 by Glib Koctunov and the three-bet of Vlado Banicevic from one seat over, making it 750. On the flop both players checked and Kovtunov then bet the turn for 1,000. Banicevic called and the river completed the board.
Kovtunov bet 3,500, Banicevic squeezed to 8,700 and then eventually called the reraise by Kovtunov for 15,200. The latter showed for the nut straight and scooped the big pot early on.
The screens now already show 73 entrants for the first of two starting days and among those to take their seats were Nico Kuan and Wouter Beltz. Kuan had cashed in the Main Event last year after coming 28th and already won a small pot according to the colleagues at PokerCity to boost his stack slightly.
€1,500 reentry champion Dominic van Embden has taken a seat and immediately ordered a massage. Georgios Zisimopoulos opted to take some chips early on and was just involved in a battle of the blinds. On the turn , the player in the small blind checked and then called the Greek's bet of 700.
Same repeated itself on the river, though this time Zisimopoulos had fired 1,800 already. The opponent called and then mucked when he was shown the for a straight draw that turned into a flush instead.
With the board reading , the player in the cutoff over on table 22 bet 2,500 for about half the pot. His opponent in the nine seat was no other than the defending champion Ruben Visser and the Dutchman eventually folded to give up the pot. It was no stellar start yet for Visser but there is plenty of time with "only" 180 big blinds.
Raoul Refos, a regular on the European Poker Tour for quite a few years, is among those to have taken their seat recently.
And then there is Foeke Deinum, who final-tabled the €1,500 reentry tournament and already boosted his stack at the end of level one after a set of threes got paid off.
Georgios Zisimopoulos raised to 400 from the hijack and the player on the button three-bet to 1,000, getting called by the big blind and the Freek. On the flop with one club, all three players check. The came on the turn and the player in the big blind checked. Zisimopoulos bet 800 and the player in the hijack then raised to 5,000, receiving calls from both opponents.
The on the river filled up the board and Zisimopoulos fired 14,000, snap-calling the shove of the opponent in the hijack with the for the nut flush. He was gifted the stack by the opponent with for just top pair.
Edit: It turned out to be René Pluijm, who had won the celebrity SNG earlier to get the Main Event ticket and usually is a chef cook.
On the river of a board with around 15,000 chips in the pot, Niels van Leeuwen moved all in for around 20,000 chips. The Dutchman had check-raised the turn and then got through with his move. Marcel Vonk smiled over and said to his opponent "I think it was a good fold."