Gert Laanemets Ended Day 1a of the Coolbet Open Main Event as Chipleader
Day 1a of the Coolbet Open Main Event hosted by Olympic Park Casino and Hilton Tallinn Park was a huge success with 113 entrants ponying up the €550 buy-in.
This represents a larger turnout than the 104 entrants that participated in Day 1a of the last Coolbet Open in May. Tomorrow's action is expected to be much bigger for the second and final opening flight thanks to the huge amount of online qualifiers slated to be in the field.
Players kicked off today's deep-stacked action with 30,000 in chips and competed for eight blinds levels of 45 minutes each. Those bagging chips will enjoy an even deeper structure for Day 2 and Day 3 on Oct. 19-20 with 60-minute blind levels.
The star of the day was Estonia's Gert Laanemets who bagged a chip-leading stack of 163,200.
Also bagging six-figure stacks on Day 1a were Tomi Rasanen (second - 127,000), Timothy Harold (third - 107,400), Ranno Sootla (fourth - 107,400), and Aare Sepp (fifth 101,600). Unlike the other players, it took Sootla two bullets in the Day 1a field to get his name on the leaderboard.
These were obviously not the only players to bag chips as 64 players from the Day 1a field will advance to Day 2. Two former professional athletes also entered today's action in former footballer Joel Lindpere and former basketball player Martin Muursepp.
Luck was not on Lindpere's side as he did not bag chips after he lost a flip near the end of the day. Muursepp fared much better and bagged a 10th place chip stack of 85,600.
Also bagging chips was Finnish musician Kim Herold, who performed as part of a three-piece band during the welcome drinks ceremony on Oct. 16, with 78,500 in chips. Both Herold and Lindpere were interviewed during Day 1a live at Facebook on the PokerNews page.
Also interviewed today was Coolbet COO Anders Karlsen. Karlsen was unable to hold onto his chips and is unsure about whether he will enter again on Day 1b or before late-registration closes at the end of the first blind level of Day 2.
Day 1b of the Main Event will kick off at 2 p.m. local time tomorrow with many new players and many of the same players from today that were unable to survive.
As was the case today, the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide complete coverage tomorrow and beyond until a winner is declared.
*Photos courtesy of Natalie Black/Coolbet Open.