This year’s tournament field at the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour in Barcelona has set a new record for the event as 619 players in total took to the floor, over days 1A and 1B. There were 292 wannabe champions on day 1A, and 327 yesterday, on day 1B — a total increase of 76 players from last year. The tournament was originally capped at 600 due to space restrictions at the Gran Casino Barcelona, but as players rallied to the rails, they were continuously replaced with fresh blood while registration remained open, which pumped up the numbers. Although, the prize pool information has not been formally announced, our crafty CardPlayer.com team managed to catch it as it wizzed by on one of the monitors. We can unofficially say the total prize pool for this event is €4,952,000 with first place set to take home the hefty sum of €1,361,000.
Top ten chip counts for day 1A survivors were:
Michael Murra – 87,000
Jason Mercier – 79,300
Nichlas Mattsson Saarisilta – 76,100
Rasmus Nielsen – 73,100
Jesper Hougaard – 72,700
Haward Speer – 72,300
David Shave Kruger – 71,100
Chad Brown – 67,100
Dren Ukella – 65,800
Glen Chorny – 65,500
Noticed, throughout day 1B, was a mixture of Team PokerStars Pros, former champions, sports stars, and aspiring hopefuls.
Irish football legend Tony Cascarino took to the floor in the hopes of a consecutive win after his recent victory at the Bolton leg of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour. Other poker faces joining him were Swedes Anders Henriksson and Jesper Hoog, and Russians Vitaly Lunkin and Andrey Zaichenko.
Team PokerStars Pro had a bit of a rough day as the first to go seemed to have a domino affect on many of the others. The team waved goodbye to Isabelle Mercier, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, former EPT champ Gavin Griffin, Luca Pagano, William Thorsson, Raymond Rahme, Daniel Negreanu, Katja Thater, and Dario Minieri.
One would wonder if anyone was left after so many exchanges of chips and players lead to the exit of a long list including Jean-Robert Bellande, Sander Lylloff, Peter Jepsen, Tim Vance, Scotty Nguyen, Nikolaus Jedlicka, Steve Frezer, Alex Outhred, Adam Junglen, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Matt Kay, Alexia Portal, and Henrik Gwinner.
110 players remain from day 1B. Day 2 which kicks off later today will see both lots of survivors merge and butt heads at 3 p.m.. The weather is not the only thing heating up in Barcelona this week. CardPlayer.com will bring you all the poker action that ensues, so stay tuned.
