Roman's Empire: Roman Mikus Leads PokerStars King's Cup

The 2014 PokerStars King's Cup here in Rozvadov got underway today with a total of 117 entries in the form of 108 unique entries and nine re-entries. With an after-dinner start time of 7pm, the players were treated to ten 40-minute levels of action with late entries and re-entries allowed for the first four levels.

At the end of the day it was Roman Mikus who finished with the largest stack, amassing a whopping 190,500 leading the 39 players who finished the day. Mikus, from the Czech Republic, had been chip leader earlier on but had dropped back down behind compatriot Ian Uppaluri. It wasn't until the last two levels that Mikus regained the lead and Uppaluri (157,200) was forced to settle for second place.

Elsewhere, former EPT Baden finalist Manfred Hammer, who finished 6th for €105,000 back in Season 4 of the European Poker Tour, also made it through the day albeit on his second bullet. He ended the day with 63,500.

Team PokerStars Pro was represented by the solitary presence of Christophe De Meulder. He had come as part of a Belgian group which also included Bart Lybaert - winner of Eureka Rozvadov in 2013 for €115,000. Alas, things did not turn out well for either player and both were eliminated without ever having a chance of accumulating a decent stack. However with the re-entry system in place, it's like they'll each take another crack at the main event once again tomorrow.

Day 1a wasn't without it's shares of ups and downs, Shengchao Zhu managed to make a straight flush against a nut flush but it was unfortunately to be the highlight of the Vietnamese player's day. Later on, Zhu's hand would be, unbelievably, upstaged as Petr Blaha managed to hit a one-outer Royal Flush to knock out another player who himself had turned a full house.

Days 1b and 1c will be played out consecutively tomorrow giving players a brand new experience for this event. Day 1b will begin at 4pm CET with the same structure as Day 1a but Day 1c offers something completely different. 1c will begin at midnight and while the structure and starting stack will be the same, the levels will be only 15 minutes long as opposed to 40, in effective, a turbo Day 1 with no re-entry. It'll certainly be interesting to see how successful this is as it will offer the last chance for many players to make it through to Saturday's Day 2.

The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be back from 4pm CET tomorrow to cover the second starting day of 2014 PokerStars King's Cup Rozvadov and as soon as that's over then we'll be jumping straight in Day 1c's turbo-structure where we'll fight to fit posts in between the rapid level increases!

See you then!