2016 888Live Austria

The starting day of the 888Live Austria Main Event tournament kicked off around 16.00 UTC+1 this afternoon, after a thrilling morning on the slopes. The event attracted 128 entries creating a €41,820 total prizepool.

We had to wait until the end of the 8th level to see the first 888's Full House. Pavel Eteev, who gained his entrance through a freeroll satellite, went all-in preflop with for 10,975 chips and ran into . Luckily for Eteev, he hit a set on the flop 8♠ Q♦ 3♣ and eventually made his full house as a 3♦ paired the board. A 5♣ hit the river and allowed Pavel to double up and also receive a Playstation 4 - courtesy of 888poker - for becoming the first player to get a full house with a set og 8's..

Soon after, 888poker's Dominik Nitsche busted his first stack: "I was already pretty short when somebody raised from middle position, so I decided to complete from [the] big blind," Nitsche said. "I check-shoved on as my opponent bet half pot, but I got snap-called with a pair of Queens." Turn and river didn't smile at Nitsche, so he got back into the game by using the re-entry option.

The 9th level began with a bad beat. In a 4-way limped pot the flop brought out , UTG+1 Trifon Trifonov bet 2,500 and get called by the button. On a turn, Trifonov decided to go all-in shoving his 7,500 remaining chips and getting called by an opponent who held . Unfortunately for him, a appeared on the river and knocked him out.

Few hands after his re-buy, Nitsche doubled-up by hitting a flush on the river. He opened from UTG with and got called four times. The flop ran out , everybody checked to the button who bet 2,000. "The two players behind me were ready to fold, so I decided to give it a try with a flush draw," Nitsche shared. Both players checked the on the turn and Dominik check-called the river with a flush for almost all his stack.

"After I doubled up, not much happened since I've been card dead. I busted the Aussie Million so quickly that I decided to spend few days at home and now I'm here playing the 888live Main Event. The atmosphere is awesome here, people are so friendly and I have to admit that I got unused to playing with german speaking poker players, but it's nice and I wish there were more tournaments here."

The action stopped after 10 levels when blinds were up to 500/1000 with 100 ante and 67 players progressed into day 2. None other than Alec Torelli surprisingly showed up after few levels of playing and managed to jump ahead with a massive stack.

"My wife and I were in Milan and we decided to head up to Innsbruck as she always wanted to bring me here," Torelli explained. "We've heard about the first 888poker event of the year so we said 'why not?'. I got here two hours late but I think things went really went well for me today. I had an amazing run of cards and made a couple of good reads - so, here I am on top of the count!"

Few tables away from Torelli, Sofia Lovgren also made it to Day 2."Unfortunately, I've been without good cards all day and I finished with approximately 19,000 chips. I made a few steals and a couple of bluffs to stay in play so tomorrow I'll have to risk something. However, this has been a lot of fun so far!"

The remaining players will come back tomorrow to fight the first prize of €11,710, while the 15th place will get €790. The play is set to restart at 14:00 UTC+1.

We just received the first official numbers about the first 888live tournament of 2016 - make sure to keep this entry in mind if you are at the venue, you are still in play, and you are looking for a morale boost.

The Main Event drew 128 entries, creating a total prize pool of €41,820 and smashing the €40,000 guarantee offered by 888poker. Unfortunately, not all 128 of them will leave the tournament with the prize, as only the top 15 will exit the tournament room with a cash prize in their pocket.

The Main Event's winner is set to bring home a €11,710 top cash prize (unless a deal is made), while the one lucky enough to survive the bubble and close his adventure with a fifteenth-place position will leave the Innsbruck casino 'only' €795 richer.

We are a few levels into day 1 when Pavel Eteev hits a full house worth a juicy pot and a brand new Playstation 4, courtesy of 888poker!

In the hand with , Eteev managed to beat his opponent's thanks to a board. As tradition dictates, the lucky board gave Eteev the rights to take not only all the chips on the table but also to win a brand new Playstation 4 because he was the first player in the Main Event to build a full house with a set of 8's.

On the way to the casino we chatted with another online qualifier, the young Jan Kocàn (22). Despite his young age, Kocàn has already a solid poker background: "I started playing semi-professionally about two years ago – Kocàn stated – and I came here with my girlfriend to have a nice holiday and play poker!"

"I really like playing on 888poker for many reasons: the software is cool and the fields aren't so big, which is ideal to crush variance. In my hometown, I share a grindhouse with two friends of mine and they definitely helped me to become a better player!"

Although the Main Event started only this afternoon, most of the players arrived on Thursday with 888poker welcoming them with an inaugural toast and a very special welcome freeroll.

As it usually happens at the 888live events, all the plus ones who have joined the online qualifiers had the chance to compete for a piece of the action by joining a freeroll qualifier to the Main event. The satellite started at 22:00 and attracted a field of 70 entries. Right three-and-a-half hours later, Manuel Hauer, Jan Heinrich, and Julian Kleinheinz were the ones who left the tournament room with a free entry to today's $50,000 guaranteed Main Event in their pockets.

Good luck to them - and to all the other 101 players in the tournament right now.

The first 888live event of 2016 has officially started.

After a glorious morning spent skiing, snowboarding, and playing poker on the snow at the Ski Resort Innsbruck Igls, the players have started to arrive at the Casino Innsbruck, where Tatjana Pasalic just welcomed the first 'shuffle up and deal' of the 2016 888live Austria Main Event.

The two-day $400 Main Event will see the players compete for a guaranteed prize pool of $50,000 and for a title that is now in the hands of Germany's Thorsten Facius, the one who emerged victorious and almost $15,000 richer one year ago after an heads-up duel played with Bosnia and Herzegovina's Andelo Bozic.

While 888poker pros Dominik Nitsche and Sofia Lovgren are surely the two biggest names in the field, the Main Event welcomes also sixty players who were crafty enough to secure a $1,700 package through the online satellites run by the poker room.

Amongst those, we found Domink Hine, a 54 year old online qualifier from London who joins the event in Austria after having been part of the 888live local tournament held in Luton, U.K., back in 2015. "I have to admit it, I got really lucky as I gained my entrance through a freeroll and won one of the ten tickets which were up for grabs," Hine explained.

"What have I been doing in my life? I used to be a JCB operator and then a van driver for many years but now I just play poker. I started with play money on Facebook and then, after having collected over two hundred million chips, I opened my first real money account on 888poker, thanks to a really good promotion. Lady Luck has not been on my side for the last two weeks but I hope she smiles at me this weekend!"

Spotted in the tournament room also the reigning champion Thorsten Facius. "I just couldn't miss it after last year's experience," Facius explaines. "This is my fifth time with 888live events: besides Seefeld I have played two times in Prague and one time in Morocco. I recently switched to Omaha after having been playing Hold'em for years. I financed my studies with poker but it's not my main job as I'm a specialist in accident reconstruction."

Making a back-to-back win is really hard, but Thorsten wants to give it a try: "I really hope to make it again this time, even though I'm aware that in a single shot it's mainly a matter of luck."

All the images on this live blog are courtesy of Fabian Grubler - Fabfotos

Tags: Dominik NitscheSofia LovgrenTatjana Pasalic