Home / Poker News September 2009 / EPT Barcelona Day 1A: rain and hangover
EPT Barcelona Day 1A: rain and hangover
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2009-09-05 13:03
The EPT’s Barcelona stop featured an uncharacteristically rainy start. After weeks of good weather and sunshine, rain and high winds battered the city, sending tourist scrambling for cover. Fortunately, for the 208 players who bellied up to the tables of the Casino Barcelona to kick off Day 1A of the EPTs by now traditional Catalan stop, rain was of little concern. Some of them had a much tougher enemy to battle, as PokerStars’ party at the Shoko club the night before had endowed them with severe hangover symptoms.
Thanks to the prime location and the ever growing prestige of the stop, the opening field looked as star-studded as truly prestigious high buy-in event should. Arnaud Mattern was there, together with Jason Mercier, Katja Thater and Roland De Wolfe. Jesper Hougard was present as well, together with his brother, Lars, and two of the event’s previous winners, Sebastian Ruthenberg and Sander Lyloff were also lurking in the shadows, looking to possibly repeat their performance this year.
As you probably know, the blinds and starting stack structure of the EPT stops have been overhauled, in order to offer the skill factor an even bigger say than before. Day 1A of the Barcelona stop saw 30,000 chip starting stacks, and with that much ammo one would think at least a firefight would ensue before the first victim hit the rail. Unfortunately that was not the case for one player, who shoved all his dynamite into a single hole and then watched as it blew up in his face, on the second hand of the tourney.
Jason Mercier didn’t do too well either in the early going, but at least he exited gracefully at the end of a fair fight. He lost about half his stack early on but made a nice recovery and pretty soon he was right back in the books. In one hand though, where he’d flopped two pairs, he shoved all in against an opponent’s set, and he was done for the day and for the event.
Jesper Hougaard was another Day 1A victim. Apparently, he couldn’t get anything going at all, and as soon as his starting stack was gone, he headed to the rail. He was joined there by Antanas Gueorguiev and Arnaud Mattern, who ran his K,Q into an opponent’s A,K to bust out.
Johnny Lodden, one of the stack building specialists of EPT seasons past, was up to his old antics again. He built up a huge stack, and made some pretty impressive calls (at one point clinching the chip lead as well) but he eventually dropped a huge part of his stack to finish the day barely alive.
The chip lead was fought over by Jorn Walthaus, who rose steadily to the challenge during the day, David Robinson and Carlos Lopez. None of these guys would be on top of the provisional leader-board at the end of the day, though they all finished with healthy stacks. The chip lead was eventually clinched by Diego Arias, who had amassed 190,000 chips.
