The www.pokerstars.com-sponsored European Poker Tour made its first stop of season four in beautiful Barcelona and drew a strong field of 264 players from the worldwide poker community.
With 550 players preregistered and John Duthie, head of the EPT, expecting the 600 capacity to be reached, the prize pool should exceed €4 million, making it the second-largest EPT event ever held and indicating the predicted demise of large fields is premature. The www.pokerstars.com team consisted of Luca Pagano, Thor Hansen, Noah Boeken, Greg Raymer, Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier, Daniel Negreanu, Katja Thater, Humberto Brenes, and Isabelle Mercier.
They were joined by the great and good of European and U.S. poker, including Sorel Mizzi, Ram Vaswani, Roland De Wolfe, Phil Gordon, Michael Keiner, Mark Vos, Katja Thater, William Thorsson, Mickey Wernick, Paul Testud, David Williams, John Kabbaj, Tim and Phillipa Flanders, Jimmy "Gobboboy" Frick, Michael Greco, Alan Smurfit, Rob Hollink, Paul Wasicka, Jani Sointula, Annette Oberstad, Thomas Brolin, and Sverre Sunbo.
Mizzi, who came third in the Irish Open this year, found himself at a tricky table with recent WSOP bracelet winner Alan Smurfit and WSOP event runner-up Stuart Fox. However he seemed totally unconcerned.
"I really, really like my table," he enthused at the first break. "There´s one guy who is pretty solid but I know how he plays so i´m not afraid of him because it´s just ABC poker and the rest of them are pretty bad, which is exactly what I want."
This led Card Player to wonder which of Smurfit or Fox was the ´"pretty solid, ABC player" and which was the "pretty bad" one!
Cards were scheduled to be in the air at the late hour of 5 p.m., but befitting the setting, no one seemed in the least bit concerned as this deadline was missed.
Len Collin, a Paddy Power Poker-sponsored player from Ireland, predicted the tardiness. "I don´t think it´s going to start on time," he said at 4:45 p.m. and wandered off to a nearby brasserie for some food, returning just before 5.30 p.m. and still in good time.
Card Player encountered a sad sight at the first break when Tim and Philipa Flanders were spotted conducting what looked like a post-mortem in the corner of the room.
When asked how they were, Tim responded with a wry grin, "Not Good. I´d just moved tables so I´ve no information when I pick up A-Q suited. The button raises and I call hitting two of my suit with a 10-high card on the board. I figure I´m going to play it because I´m at least 50-50 and I´m the lowest stack with 6,000. After a long while he calls with a pair of queens. I´m not too worried as I can still hit the ace or a diamond but it wasn´t to be. My last 1,000 chips then went in on a pair of fives but….," he trailed off.
Philipa, who last year won the PartyPoker World Open, had an equally sorry story.
"I had A-7 suited on the big blind," she explained. "The guy round the corner, who was raising all the time, raised by another 100. The flop comes out A-7-2 so I keep pumping it and he keeps calling. We end up all in. The last card is a king and he has A-K. Poo!"
Michael Keiner, another recent European bracelet winner at the World Series of Poker, got off to a slow start at a tough table. "For the first 90 minutes I didn´t play one hand. I have that Internet kid Kaibuxxe from Austria on my table. Another guy is the chairman of the Danish Poker Federation and two aggressive Swedish guys. So I think this is the best approach in these long-format tournaments: to build up a nit image. Then after 90 minutes, I raise three hands in a row and people are a little confused. Then the last hand before the break I had aces and I showed them so I´m changing gears really fast and I´m a little above 11,000 now."
As the evening wore on, some big names were seen wandering aimlessly around the casino having been knocked out. Ram Vaswani, Jimmy Fricke, Roland De Wolfe, Stuart Fox, Jonny Lodden, Mickey Wernick, William Thorsson, Sorel Mizzi, John Turner ,and Jani Sointula all bit the dust on day 1A.
John Kabbaj was one player who never got out of the starting blocks. Sharing a table with David Williams and Len Collin, he got entangled in a pot with them and was seriously damaged. "I´d been fishing quite a bit and against John I caught the nut straight on the river and he lost 50 percent of his chips."
Collin himself got unlucky and he couldn´t rebound. "I'm small blind and Williams on the big blind makes it 400," he said. "I have K-Q and with two limpers and Williams ahead, I decide to call. The flop comes Q-6-9 rainbow. An ace on the turn is worrying but i´m sure from the way he made the bet he didn´t have one. A 4 fell on the river and I think I have him so go all in. he calls instantly and turns over pocket fours."
Towards the end of the evening, Card Player spotted Mickey Wernick dashing across the room. When asked how he was, the response was a familiar one. "Not good. I have 2,000 chips left so I´m off to double up," he shouted over his shoulder with a grin.
At the end of play, just 99 players remained.
The top 10 chip leaders were:
1. Gregory Dyer (USA): €76,500
2. Mark Teltscher (UK): €67,300
3. Mark Vos (Australia): €64,300
4. Sander Lylloff (Denmark): €62,600
5. Sverre Sundbo (Norway): €60,500 (PokerStars-sponsored pro)
6. Massimiliano Rosa (Italy): €60,100
7. Cort Kibler-Melby (Germany): €59,500 (PokerStars qualifier)
8. Björn Erik Glenne (Norway): €56,700
9. Andrey Zaichenko (Russia): €56,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
10. Jose Roldan Vicente (Spain): €53,000
Check back for news from the Barcelona EPT after the start of day 1B, which will see U.S. giants Greg Raymer and Daniel Negreanu take to the felt.
