Day 1B of the Barcelona Main Event is the day of the year that every poker reporter dreads.
Not for a lack of action or poker talent; this 1,229-strong field had that in spades (clubs, hearts, and diamonds). But because at the end of it all, we have to wade through the 637 players who survived today and somehow find the one guy or gal who leads the lot.
But hoorah! We found him! Introducing your end-of-Day 1B chip leader: Jose Latorre.
Latorre bagged up 243,800 after a fantastic day’s work, but especially thanks to a monster pot he won right at the business end. He turned the nut flush and – lucky for him – his opponent Malid Noubarian had turned the second nut flush. All the money went in on the river (115,000 to 119,000) and sent Noubarian home in brutal fashion.
Meanwhile, others who loaded up heavy chip bags include Vladimir Geshkenbein with 200,000 and Usman Siddique with 191,000.
Vanessa Selbst was the only PokerStars Team Pro to bust today that we know of right now, despite there being a bunch of red spades out in the field. Andre Akkari (123,300), Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier (57,700), Felipe Ramos (41,300), Jeff Gross (40,700), and Marcin Horecki (15,300) will all be back tomorrow for certain.
“Zedd’s dead baby. Zedd’s dead.” At least that’s what we were saying about the famous DJ in terms of his tournament life. The guy who rocked the party at last night’s PokerStars shindig couldn’t make it to the second break, but we did hear him say “It’s the most fun I’ve had losing,” as he departed.
Another guy who easily made our ‘ones to watch’ list early was Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom. However, the online legend never seemed to have more than his starting stack, and eventually busted in the penultimate level of the day when his ace-queen was outflopped by ace-jack.
Throughout the course of play we also lost the likes of Luca Pagano, Sam Grafton, Peter Eichhardt, Rocco Palumbo, Aleksandr Denisov, Denis Timofeev, Niall Farrell, Jason Wheeler, Jeff Sarwer, Ana Marquez, and Alexander Debus.
We can’t bring you any official numbers just yet, because registration is still open until the start of Day 2 tomorrow. Expect to see the odd high roller hopping in with 30 big blinds then.
There are simply too many notable stacks to name them all, but you can click here for a complete list of Day 1B survivors. In the meantime, have a read through all of our Day 1B live coverage here.
Join us at 12pm Barcelona time tomorrow for more rapid-fire live updates. Plus, the live stream will kick off then too. Until then, te veo mañana.
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