The first stop on season six of the PokerStars European Poker Tour kicked off today in Kiev, Ukraine, and 129 players jumped into play for €5,000 each. The cavernous Kiev Sports Palace played host to action on day 1A. The initial season-six event was moved from Moscow after poker was declassified as a sport in the country and all of the casinos were closed. The Ukrainian government officially made poker a non-Olympic sport two months ago, and now a major poker tournament is being contested in the same building that recently played host to the World Cup of Gymnastics just a few days ago.
Two Team PokerStars pros were active on day 1A. Luca Pagano (pictured above) was eliminated during the day when his two pair ran into a flopped set of eights, while Alex Kravchenko advanced to Thursday’s day 2 with 46,550. Day 1B will begin at noon EEST (2 a.m. PST) tomorrow, and Card Player will bring you another summary of the action shortly after play concludes.
Here is a look at the important information from day 1A:
Starting Field: 129
PokerStars Qualifiers: 33
Players Remaining: 93
Top 10 Chip Counts:
Mihaylo Demidenko (Ukraine): 145,125
Oleksandr Ziv (Ukraine): 98,275
Yevgeniy Zaitsev (Russia): 97,750
Alexander Dovzhenko (Russia): 97,150
Jeffrey Sarwer (Canada): 91,225
David Aslanyan (Russia): 88,325
Alem Shah (Germany): 85,675
Volodymyr Pilyavskyy (Ukraine): 84,025
Umberto Vitagliano (Italy): 82,625
Michael Naletov (Russia): 81,550
Notable Chip Counts:
Arnaud Mattern (France): 54,700
John Cernuto (USA): 51,500
Alex Kravchenko (Russia): 46,550
Nikolay Evdakov (Russia): 43,875
Notable Eliminations:
Luca Pagano
