John Kagame has definitely been one of the more entertaining players in Day 1b. During the last level of the night, it is expected to see many bluff. Kagame, however, is one never afraid to show it.
From under-the-gun, Kagame raised and everyone folded. He slammed down his cards and smiled when he showed his bluff with .
Among the recent casualties was Unibet Open veteran Nicholas Storm. There are 92 players left out of the 238 that entered the field in Day 1a. We are about to head into our last blind level of the day with blinds set at 1,000/2,000 with an ante of 300. The average stack is about 38 big blinds or a bit over 75,000 chips. During the same time yesterday, the average stack was over 50 big blinds. Day 1a ended with 51 players out of the 186 surviving to play on Saturday.
United Kingdom's Ian Simpson has been near the top of the pack just about since the first cards were dealt over 10 hours ago. While most of the time Simpson has been on the winning ends of big pots and small ones, his stack took a small hit after losing a few smaller pots.
Simpson though is still among the leaders of the day, however, with 130,000 chips.
Among the bigger stacks in play is that of United Kingdom's Khatri Bhavin. The British poker player shared that he has been a card rack getting hand after hand. He has recently had pocket kings and pocket jacks twice each with the hands holding up.
The Casino Challenge takes place on most stops on the Unibet Open. Just hours ago United Kingdom's Laura Simkute took down the Casino Challenge for a cool £10,000. The tournament host Rein Ostfelt shared with us from beginning to end the contest took seven hours with games played in blackjack and roulette.
The fourteen participants all qualified in online on Unibet, which not only included a chance at the £15,000 prize pool, but also free accommodations and travel money.
China's Jin Hui didn't have to travel as far as his home country to play in the Unibet Open Main Event as for the past three years he has been living in the United Kingdom.
Hui recently ran his stack up to 220,000 chips when he suffered a huge cooler when his flush ran into the king of all hands, the royal flush. Despite losing this huge monster six-digit pot, he was on the other side of a cooler when he flopped a set while holding . One of his opponents held , while another also flopped a set, but just slightly lower with his .
Hui's stack now is still well above average at 130,000 chips and is one of the players in contention to potentially be in the chip lead at the end of the day.
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