Home / Poker News September 2010 / PokerStars EPT London – Day 1A report
PokerStars EPT London – Day 1A report
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2010-09-30 15:53
London is slowly but surely morphing into the poker capitol of the world, there are fewer and fewer doubts about that. Barely have the media waves generated by the WSOPE subsided, there’s another thing afoot in London to keep media rats and poker railbirds excited for a while: the PokerStars
EPT which just kicked off with its first Day 1 flight.
Given that no fewer than 399 players chose to belly up to the tables of the Hilton Metropole, the
poker tournament may yet beat the record for the biggest live poker event ever hosted in the UK.
After 9 levels of play, the field was reduced to 146, with online qualifier Sohen Porbandarwala leading the way. Having amassed a stack of 218,600 Porbandarwala was the only player to shoot above the 200k mark. He shared tables with a couple of Dutch players who’d dominated the early proceedings. Pim De Goede and Marcel Van Klinken had amassed a couple of respectably sized stacks, most of which they then dropped to Porbandarwala to propel him into the lead. They both survived the day, but they did so on average-sized stacks.
The field was strewn with online qualifiers who had earned their seats at
PokerStars, but there were plenty of “name” pros too. Vanessa Selbst was there, together with Carlos Mortensen, Luca Pagano and Roland De Wolfe. Bertrand Grospellier and Marcel Luske also played.
Konstantin Bucherl had an excellent Day 1A. He finished hot on the heels of the chip leader, together with PokerStars’ Joep Van den Bijgaart and Thomas Bichon, who also succeeded in amassing more than healthy stacks.
Other “name” players to finish near the top were Greg Raymer, William Thorson and Barry Shulman. Arnaud Mattern and Ivan Demidov also survived somewhere in the middle of the pack. Vanessa Rousso and Frank Kassela moved on too, albeit on shorter stacks.
