Home / Poker News April 2010 / EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 1A report
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 1A report
Posted by: Randy Williams - Tue, 2010-04-27 16:47
351 players registered for the 2010
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final’s Day 1A. The venue where the action kicked off yesterday was the definition of a state-of-the-art facility. The roof could be lifted off the poker room, so sunshine could bathe the players, but being poker players, the participants had little to no interest in exposing themselves to the sun’s rays. Of the 351 initial starters, only 173 players survived the first Day 1 flight, with Germany’s Simon Munz leading the way.
Munz amassed a stack of 175,200 chips to clinch top spot for the day.
Day 1A’s starting field saw no shortage of “name” players. Phil Ivey was there, together with Men Nguyen and Roland De Wolfe. Luke Schwartz, Patrik Antonius, Chad Brown, Greg Raymer, Arnaud Mattern, Jennifer Tilly and Alex Kravchenko were there as well. As you can see, Team
PokerStars pro was well represented indeed.
Some of these guys would not be able to hang around for too long though. The Unabomber exited early, sent to the rail by Adrew Chen. Gavin Griffin had a rough early ride too, during which he pretty much bled all his chips away. He then picked up an A,K and shoved all-in on it, only to be called by Allen Bari who had pocket Qs for the coin-flip. This flip went Bari’s way and Griffin bit the dust too.
As the flow of eliminations gathered momentum, Phil Ivey found himself at the rail too, together with Alex Kravchenko, Barry Greenstein, Barny Boatman and Erik Seidel. Arnaud Mattern and Patrik Antonius were eliminated too in the latter part of the day.
Antonio Buonanno on the other hand, had an excellent
poker tournament. He clinched the early chip lead by eliminating two players and by bullying Barny Boatman around a little. He did get overtaken by the day’s end, but he finished within the top 10 nonetheless.
Munz shot to the chip lead on almost the last hand of the day. He got it all-in on Q,Q against Nacho Barbero’s pocket Js and another player’s A,K. The flop gave him another Q for the set and he ended up sending both his opponents to the rail, to triple up and to secure the chip lead. Neil Channing and David Paredes also finished on large stacks.
