It’s day two at EPT Kyiv, and after the thunderstorms of day 1a and the blackout of day 1b, we’re preparing for earthquakes, tidal waves and a plague of locusts this afternoon.
While we wait for today’s Biblical torment to be unleashed, there’s a poker tournament going on — and things are getting interesting. The fields from the opening flights are now combined and 203 players have returned to the Palace of Sports in downtown Kyiv to play through another five or six levels. It’s extremely difficult to predict how matters will progress as this is the first tournament with the EPT’s generous new structure. The players started with a 30,000 stack and today the levels are 75 minutes long. Starting blinds are 400-800 (75 ante), and with the chip leaders around the 150,000 mark and the average stack a little less than 44,000, there is plenty of play left. If that’s what they want.
However, experience of these major tournaments tells us that day two begins in a flurry of eliminations. Players who clung on for all their lives were worth at the end of the starting day now look at their meagre stacks as if a fashionista finding a deposit from their pet chiuaua at the bottom of their Luis Vuitton carry case. They fling the chips into the middle behind any ace or any pair and are frequently snapped off and sent packing. Some of them, of course, will double up and go on a charge into the high echelon; this will be the place to follow all the action.
The man they’re all chasing this afternoon is Viktor Ivanov, from Russia, who opened a bag of 153,825 chips this morning.
Hot on his heels is the Ukrainian player Mihaylo Demidenko, and then Jason Kudron, a PokerStars qualifier from the United States. We’ll be catching up with Kudron today to bring you his full story and details of the exploits that carried him across the Atlantic to the CIS.
Other star names lurking in the pack include Dragan Galic (110,175), Andrew Feldman (95,350), Allan Baekke (67,025), Liya Gerasimova (66,150) and Shaun Deeb (65,425). The Team PokerStars Pro trio of Ivan Demidov, Alexander Kravchenko and Katja Thater are also lurking with intent. And this being eastern Europe, and the dust down a very weary old joke, there are any number of other huge names in the field, some weighing in at 15 or more letters. We’ll hope to find the stories behind the consonants today, and place a picture on the syllables.
It’s going to be another frantic day. Stick with us.
Chip counts throughout the day are available on the chip counts page, or by following the cutely concealed links dotted about the blog.
Vide coverage is at PokerStars.tv and you can get all this in letters you can’t even read over at the Russian or German blogs.
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