Aldemir Flies Over the Pond, Bags €50K Lead in Prague
If Koray Aldemir had any jet lag, he didn't let it slow him down.
The young German star said he hopped on a flight across the pond today to get to PokerStars Championship Prague in time for a relatively early registration in the €50,000 Super High Roller. About six hours later, he put a leading stack of 812,000 in a bag, best of the 19 players who made it through Day 1.
Of course, given the structures currently used in these SHR events, he's got most of his work ahead of him if he wants to win this thing, since there's still registration open until the start of Day 2. Also, a majority of the 28 entries punched Day 2 tickets. Still, over three starting stacks is a nice start for Aldemir, who is trying to cap off a fantastic year — he's already tallied $4.4 million in cashes — with a lucky 13th six-figure cash.
Aldemir got the best of Henrik Hecklen in a flip when ace-king suited made a backdoor flush against pocket jacks, bolstering Aldemir after a nice start. He hit his apex just before bagging and has a nice lead over Orpen Kisacikoglu (652,000) and Erik Seidel (629,000), who are almost knotted up in second.
Seidel made a set of aces late when Mikita Badziakouski barreled off into him, while Kisacikoglu victimized John Juanda on a tough beat that saw the five-time bracelet winner's aces cracked by pocket jacks.
While those players experienced the most success during the course of play, a handful will be relying on reentries and possible Day 2 entries if they want any piece of this prize pool. Steve O'Dwyer fired off two bricks, with Kisacikoglu and Stephen Chidwick also reentering but bagging. Others who busted included Juha Helppi, Nick Petrangelo and Dominik Nitsche.
Day 2 of the event gets rolling at 12:30 p.m. local time on Monday at 3,000/6,000/1,000, so come back to PokerNews for more feature coverage and head over to the PokerStars Blog for live updates.
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