The PokerStars.com European Poker Tour German Open, taking place in the Hohensyburg Casino, Dortmund, attracted a total of 411 players for the €8,000 buy-in main event, with 198 players taking to the felt on day 1A and 213 players on day 1B. This created a total prize pool of €3,288,000, and a likely first prize of €800,000.
The lineup included some of the biggest names in the game, including Team PokerStars pros Daniel Negreanu and
Noah Boeken, Ram Vaswani, Annette Obrestad, Roland De Wolfe, Marcel Luske, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier.
The latter two found themselves seated at the same table as the cards took to the air, but by the end of play, ElkY, who recently won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, was in no position to make it back-to-back titles, standing, as he was, at the rail. Shortstacked, he pushed with A-10 and was called by J-J. When the community cards hit the table — A-10-J-6-9 — the Frenchman hit the rail.
Hendon Mobster Vaswani was his usual active self, doubling up on a board of 9-A-9-8 with Q-9, against A-K, and soon afterwards his stack took another pleasing jump north when he found quads, but it was not enough to propel him into day 2, as he came a cropper with an ill-timed bluff.
Negreanu got off to a slow start, falling to 7,000, but he later doubled up with Q-Q against Jens Lübbe’s K-J, and from then on it was relatively plain sailing for the American, who made it through to day 2 with around 60,000 in chips.
Obrestad doubled up with set-over-set and eased into day 2, but notable casualties who would not be returning for today’s play included Luca Pagano, Arnaud Mattern, and Roland De Wolfe.
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