Oh my. Day 1b of EPT Barcelona is now in the books, and that’ll be a chapter remembered for some time as one of the toughest for all concerned. After a relatively pedestrian day 1a — small-ish field, newly-reorganised tournament area, hungover star players biding their time — today was the explosion we knew was on its way.
Within about five hands of the day beginning, the Team PokerStars Pro Lex “RaSZi” Veldhuis was up to 90,000, three times his starting stack, and somehow that set the tone for the nine levels that followed. Veldhuis was already into three figures before we had even finished counting all the previous EPT champions. This field was studded with so many stars, the night sky over Catalonia was rendered black.
At day’s end, many are still glinting; others have been sucked into the black hole. Veldhuis is still charging — only two players from his starting table remain, and one of them is called Negreanu — but it’s probably Matthew Woodward who has the most to shout about. At our final approximate count towards the end, the EPT Grand Final runner up had 190,900. That’s going to send his name to the top of the charts.
Also included near to the top of this exceptional list of talent are the following, with their approximate counts in them there curly things after their names. That man Negreanu (106,100) is among them, as is Robert Mizrachi (164,600), Asa Smith (158,000), Samer Rahmen (152,800), Brandon Schaefer (135,000), Mike McDonald (125,800), Noah Boeken (98,000), Sandra Naujoks (68,000), Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (57,900) and Ivan Demidov (45,000).
As ever, the full official counts will be made available to us within a couple of hours of day’s close, and made available to you via the occasional unobtrusive red flashing link.
But you’ll notice that this other lot aren’t there. We lost Peter Eastgate, Dario Minieri, Pieter de Korver, Alex Kravchenko, Marcel Luske, William Thorson, Juan Maceiras, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Boris Becker, Pierpaolo Fabretti, Scotty Nguyen and Henrique Pinho today, among others.
We went from a starting field of 271 to something like 143. They remain in with a shot at the €850,000 first prize. (The full payout structure is available on the payout page.)
Tomorrow is day two when our field consolidates and edges nearer to the bubble. We might reach it, we might not. You’ll just have to tune in to find out.
In the meantime, check through today’s play with this huge dump of hyperlinks.
Day 1b introduction
Solve the puzzle, admire the field
Across the barricades
Sandra Naujoks and Fatima Moreira De Melo: Pictures are included
It’s their word against ours
The life of Brandon Schaefer
We are the champions
Going public: Poker players and their Twitter
The view from the rail
A Kyiv reunion
Boris Becker speaks
The Noah Boeken post
Level 1 updates
Level 2 updates
Level 3 updates
Level 4 updates
Level 5 updates
Level 6 updates
Level 7 updates
Level 8 updates
Level 9 updates
And there’s similar, with added alphabet, in Spanish, Italian, German and Swedish at their familiar homes.
PokerStars.tv can feed your moving picture fix. Neil Stoddart has been carrying the camera today, for which he earns an “All photos are (c) Neil Stoddart” stamp. We’ll be back tomorrow, so see you then.
A life-ring to end the day. Who needs a reason.
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