In addition to Daniel Kapadia, James Bardolph is the other eSports star who was sponsored for Day 1b of the Unibet Open London Main Event.
Bardolph shared with us that he has been playing poker for 13 years, so he is far from new to the game. In fact, he was playing poker before he was involved in eSports. The way he was professionally shuffling the chips proves this point as well.
While Bardolph doesn't have many live poker tournament cashes in his career according to The Hendon Mob, the two he does have were both final table finishes in lower buy-in events.
Thus far, things are going well for Bardolph as during the opening level he was able to increase his opening stack from 30,000 to 34,000 chips.
The field continues to get bigger as they are now seating people in a side room in addition to the main room. We are now at 209 players, and the tournament director informed us that there will be no cap on the number of entrants. This means the field could exceed the 450 player cap originally suggested for the tournament.
Ian Simpson was racking in some chips bringing him up to 39,000 and when we asked what the hand was, he shared with us nothing much, "it was just quads."
Simpson mentioned that he flopped a set of tens on a board. His opponent Mark Taylor had a flush, however, the case-ten spiked the board on the river giving Simpson a big pot early in the tournament.
Dutch poker player Mateusz Moolhuizen is just one of two players to win multiple Unibet Open Main Events. In 2011 he won €117,000 ($163,075) in the Unibet Open Malta Main Event. More recently he took down in Nov. 2015 the Unibet Open Antwerp Main Event for €71,000 ($75,487). It isn't all about the Unibet Open for Moohuizen, however, as he has accumulated over $700,000 in career cashes according to The Hendon Mob.
Moolhuizen today is off to a slow start in his quest to become the first player to win three Unibet Open Main Events. Even though his stack has dwindled from 30,000 to 23,000 chips, the structure is very deep and this could prove to just be a drop in the bucket for this experienced poker pro.
Before the first break, Daniel Clifford became the first player to exit the tournament. We learned from his opponent Cristian Cirtog that both players flopped a pair in a multi-way pot on the flop of . Cirtog already had the best of it with top pair holding while Clifford held only bottom pair with . The on the turn wasn't an action card for either player, however, an spiked the river giving both players two-pair. Clifford got the rest of his chips all-in and was the first to leave the tournament arena after he saw Cirtog holding a better two-pair.
Other players leaving the tournament arena before the first break included England's Dost Ghrabie, Sweden's Daniel Ekstrom, and Turkey's Orpen Kisacikoglu.
With already 220 players and counting in Day 1b in the Unibet Open London Main Event, we are now at 406 entrants when taking into account the 186 who faced off yesterday.
If you are wondering what the record for a Unibet Open Main Event, we are not quite there yet as we need to surpass 460 players. With a little more than two hours of late registration, it seems that record will likely hold.
Among the players spotted in attendance is British poker player Matt Perrins. Perrins, who has over $1.6 million in live poker tournament cashes is best known for winning a gold bracelet along with $792,275 in the 2013 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Event #57 - $5,000 No Limit Hold'em.
Since then Perrins has played very little tournament poker. In fact, he shared with us that it has been over two years since he last played in a poker tournament since he has been focusing primarily on ring games. Perrins shared he joined in on the action today since he heard about the Unibet Open and he was local enough to hop in.
So far not much has happened with Perrins as his starting 30,000 chip stack is only down about 10 percent to around 27,000 chips. Perrins is hoping go deep in the Unibet Open Main Event, thus continuing his success in poker tournaments where he left off over two years ago.
During the first break, the tournament director instructed the dealers to provide a chip count of everyone in the tournament. The results are now tabulated for some players and it appears that Poland's Andrzej Kozikowski could be in the lead with 53,000 chips.
Not too far behind are Denmark's Daniel Petersen with 44,000, France's Nicolas Ludwicki with 42,375 chips, Sweden's Per Smedman with 42,000 chips, and Romania's Alexandru Rauta with 41,075 chips.
board. His opponent Mark Taylor had a flush, however, the case-ten spiked the board on the river giving Simpson a big pot early in the tournament.
. Cirtog already had the best of it with top pair holding 
on the turn wasn't an action card for either player, however, an 
