Home / Poker News April 2009 / EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 1A report
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 1A report
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2009-04-30 14:32
The €10,000 buy-in didn’t really deter anyone from entering the biggest live poker event on the old continent, as scores of name pros, poker stars and other sort of stars descended on the tables of the Main Event, eager to score a big one heading into this year’s WSOP.
396 players bellied up to the tables on Day 1A, among them Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, John Juanda, Phil Ivey, Annette Obrestad and Erik Seidel. Let’s not forget about Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and Luca Pagano either.
The Grand Final featured starting stacks of 30,000 chips, to eliminate the luck factor as much as possible from the proceedings. Despite the more than sturdy stacks, it took a surprisingly short time for some of the players to burn through their ammo and head to the rail.
Mike Vesia for instance, managed to drop almost his entire starting stack within a few hands of the kick-off. Erik Cajelais was the beneficiary of that one. Vesia obviously viewed the beginning of the tournament as a do or die stage as he quickly shoved all his remaining chips in, to double up through Richard Ashby. He shoved all in again on the very next hand, and soon found himself out of contention.
Constant Rijkenberg, the winner of the last EPT stop was also in the field, though he failed to repeat his previous stellar EPT performance. He became one of the early casualties of Day 1A himself. He found little shame in heading to the rail though, especially as he was joined by an illustrious company comprised of Tony G, Phil Ivey, Greg Raymer and Mike McDonald. McDonald had his pocket rockets cracked by Ben Fineman’s pocket kings in his final hand of the day and the event.
Lee Nelson’s was an altogether different story: he accumulated chips throughout the day to finish in the provisional chip lead, followed by Luca Pagano. Johnny Lodden who played at Nelson’s table also survived the day.
Other notorious Day 1A survivors were: Humberto Brenes, James Obst, Annette Obrestad and JJ Liu.
