ISPT Wembley Main Event Day 2b: Pete Linton Leads; Overlay Hits €589,000
The inaugural International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) €3,000 Main Event resumed Saturday with Day 2b at Wembley Stadium. A field of 442 players on Day 1b brought the total entrants for the tournament to 761 entries across the two (live) start days.
The big story on Saturday story was the massive overlay for the event which guarantees €1 million to the eventual winner. Given that 20% of the prize pool is going to first place, this still means that the ISPT and partner Dusk Til Dawn will have to come up with €589,060 to make first prize the guaranteed €1 million, and that is before overlays in the live and online satellites are taken into account.
Speaking from a UK perspective, the tournament was ably supported by almost everyone in the community. Indeed anyone who "could" play (and wasn't already in Las Vegas) did play. There was a large French contingent as well, but the aforementioned problems also explained why it hadn't been even bigger. Surprisingly, there were less Scandinavians that perhaps had been expected with only regulars such as Peter Eastgate, Michael Tureniec and Ramsi Jelassi making the journey across the North Sea. Perhaps most disappointingly for DTD and the ISPT was the complete lack of players from Ireland; beyond Jude Ainsworth, it was hard to find any Irish players, despite this being the perfect sort of event that they would cross the Irish Sea for.
In the tournament itself, Day 2b began well for Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi who quickly saw his stack hit rocket after flopping a set of deuces against an overpair and eventually peaked at 150,000. But as good as it got for the ISPT ambassador; he soon dropped down to just 35,000 and then suffered the indignity of running kings into aces for his elimination.
Fellow ambassador Liz Lieu fared somewhat better and saw her stack steadily rise throughout the day while sharing one of the tougher tables with chip leader Pete Linton, and, later on, former WSOP Main Event finalist James Akenhead. Lieu finished with 70,200 while Akenhead was very disappointed to enter Day 3 with 44,700 - especially having been over the six-figure mark earlier in the day.
After blitzing the last live satellite at Wembley on Friday night, Linton managed to keep the chip lead on Day 2b, although he won't be leading overall. Linton, a Dusk Til Dawn club regular who "grew up" sparring with Sam Trickett and former EPT winner Julian Thew in some cash games in Nottingham, finished the day with 306,000. This was only 26,000 more than he started with but it was still more than enough to have him be the only player with over 300,000 after nine levels of play.
Other players who made it through to Day 3 include former Main Event winner Peter Eastgate and EPT Champion Toby Lewis, as well as the always entertaining Tony G. All three re-entered after previously being eliminated on Day 2a. It didn't go so well for former November Niner Sam Holden, an early exit after a set-over-set altercation, while Jeff Sarwer and Michael Tureniec were also knocked out on Day 2b.
Alban Juen will still be the chip leader going into Day 3, the last day incidentally that we will be on Wembley's hallowed turf. From Monday the tournament will be moved back inside and played in the Bobby Moore suite - named after England's most famous footballer who was captain when England won their only World Cup back in 1966.
Join the PokerNews Live Reporting Team from 12pm UK time as the ISPT event at Wembley Stadium continues!
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