2009 WPT Marrakech

€4,500 Championship Main Event
Day: 1
123
Event Info

2009 WPT Marrakech

Final Results
Winner
Winning Hand
8♣7♣
Prize
€377,262
Event Info
Buy-in
€4,500
Entries
416
Level Info
Level
29
Blinds
40,000 / 80,000
Ante
10,000

WPT Marrakech Makes History

[user66118]
[user66118]
PokerNews is thrilled to welcome you to exotic Morocco for the inaugural WPT Marrakech! Just about halfway through this eighth season of the hugely successful tournament series, ChiliPoker has brought the first major live poker tournament here to Africa.

The preliminary events have been underway for a few days now, highlighted by the €9,000 High Rollers event that finished up yesterday. Ross Boatman emerged victorious, toping the 45-person field to earn himself a six-figure payday. Older brother Barny scored a 4th-place cash of his own while WPT Cyprus champion Thomas Bichon padded his pockets once again with a 3rd-place finish in between those two Hendon Mob heavyweights. Rumor has it that the familiar faces of Antony Lellouche, Nicolas Levi, and Annette Obrestad are lurking around here somewhere too.

The Poker Diva, Liz Lieu, will most certainly be in attendance as a representative of the host poker site. Apart from those already mentioned, we hope to have a good mix of top-tier pros and hopeful amateurs in the field tomorrow. Truthfully though, nobody knows quite what to expect inasmuch as this region has never before experienced a tournament of this magnitude.

The €4,500 Main Event gets rolling at 2:00pm WET tomorrow at the Casino De Marrakech. We'll go at it for three full days on the way to crowning the first-ever WPT Champion in Africa sometime late in the day on Sunday. Tune in tomorrow to see which of the big names make an appearance here, and, of course, to catch all of the action both on and off the felt as it unfolds live.

Day 1 Approaches

[user66118]
[user66118]
Good afternoon from the lovely Casino De Marrakech, and welcome to the start of the WPT Marrakech! This luxurious building was constructed in 1952, and it will be bursting at the seams with poker players today.

The word on the street is that the Main Event has sold out, capped at 400 runners. Those already registered represent 32 countries, and there is a whole hoard of press here from around the world as well. Before the cards have even gone in the air, it's become evident that this area of the world is ready for serious tournament poker.

We're still just about an hour away from our scheduled starting time, and the staff is hard at work preparing the tournament room for play. The field will begin with 20,000 starting chips and we'll play 60-minute levels. In short, it's going to be a long three days.

Sit tight, we'll be back with the 'shuffle up and deal' shortly!

Level: 1

Blinds: 25/50

Ante: 0

Let's Get it Started (in Here)

[user66118]
[user66118]
After some multilingual opening remarks from Tournament Director Matt Savage (and translators), he's uttered the most famous words in poker. You don't need a translator for that; "Shuffle up and deal," is universal. With that, the cards are in the air, and the WPT Marrakech is underway.

Familiar Faces

[user66118]
[user66118]
As the players settle into their seats and the latecomers receive their chip stacks, a pretty impressive field is starting to come together.

We have the 1996 WSOP champion Huck Seed, and he's table mates with the 2007 WSOP-E champion, Annette Obrestad. Antonio Esfandiari is in the house, and he and Sorel Mizzi are bouncing back and forth between each other's table and their own.

The French are out in full force. Arnaud Mattern is sitting with the dangerous Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, and Nicolas Levi is at an adjacent table. Ludovic Lacay is here too, as are fellow-Frenchmen, Davidi Kitai, and Bruno Fitoussi, and Pascal Perrault. The Partouche group is well-represented as well, with Alain Roy, Stephan Bazin, and Antonin Teisseire among those sporting the team patches.

And then there's the Hendon Mob. Ross Boatman is playing the Main, fresh off his victory in the High Rollers event on Wednesday. Brother Barny has just taken his seat near the end of the first level, and Joe Beevers makes it three-out-of-four Hendon Mobbers in the house. There's no sign of Ram Vaswani, at least not so far.

They staff tells us they are taking alternates in order to accommodate more than 400 players, so we expect a few more notables to trickle in over the course of the next couple hours.

Bad Start For Lellouche

[user76023]
[user76023]
"Sigh."
"Sigh."
Double EPT finalist and occasional Seth Rogen lookalike Antony Lellouche has dropped a decent amount of his chips here.

He bet 1,500 on the river of a {9-Clubs} {2-Diamonds} {10-Clubs} {A-Diamonds} {5-Clubs} board and was quickly called. Lellouche showed {2-Clubs} {2-Hearts} but had walked into {9-Diamonds} {9-Spades}.
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