Home / Poker News November 2009 / PokerStars EPT Vilamoura – Day 1B report
PokerStars EPT Vilamoura – Day 1B report
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2009-11-21 03:23
Day 1B of the PokerStars sponsored
European Poker Tour’s Vilamoura stop saw a massive field of 186 registrants head to the tables. The weather wasn’t as nice as it had been the previous day, but the larger number of registrants probably had nothing to do with that. For whatever reason, would be players always show up in greater numbers on the last first-day flight of an event, at that was probably the case in Vilamoura too.
Many of the “name” players attending the event decided to get rolling on Day 1B too.
Betrand “ElkY” Grospellier was among them and so were Peter Eastgate, Dario Minieri, Andy Black and Huck Seed. All these players were late of course, but latest of them all was Peter Eastgate who came in a whole hour after the “shuffle up and deal” call. If he had known the table he was about to take a seat at was that of Rousso, Minieri and Julien Brecard, he might’ve decided not to show up at all.
After taking care of a wardrobe malfunction that had him tagged as an American, Eastgate finally got down to business. He however, much like the other “name” players from his table, he failed to make it to Day 2.
Early in the going, it was Italian Marco della Tommasina who clinched the provisional chip lead. He picked up a pair of rockets that paved his way to a spectacular triple-up. Later on, Johannes Strassman also took the lead for a while, then handed it down to Praz Bansi. WPT Warsaw champion, Christophe Benzimra also poked a nose into the top ranks, before sinking back into the field to finish the day on a medium-size stack.
Matthew Nielberg was the one mainly responsible for the elimination of the Team
PokerStars crew from Eastgate’s and Rousso’s table. Luca Pagano came to the rescue of the PokerStars players exacting some sweet revenge on the young Brit.
At the end of the day, the chip lead went to Canadian chess player Jeff Sarwer, who accumulated a stack of 143,400 chips. Compared to Day 1A chip leader Ljubomir Josipovic’s stack, that wasn’t exactly impressive, but it was enough to earn him the provisional pole.
