That's It and That's All
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Team PokerStars was well represented with the likes of German Pros Katja Thater, Florian Langmann, Sandra Naujoks, and Ben Kang. From Holland, we had Ruben Visser, Joep van den Bijgaart, Marcel Luske, and Pieter de Korver. Arnaud Mattern was here from France, as was Poland's Marcin Horecki.
The victim of a tough table break and a bout with tournament apathy, Shaun Deeb was one of the first players to be sent home. Deeb tried to build a big stack early, but quite the opposite proved true as he was headed back to the airport before the first break. Along the same lines, Ruben Visser tried his best to amass a stack before being eliminated midway through the day.
Other notables meeting their ends today included Almira Skripchenko, Andrew Teng, Georges Hanna, and Julian Thew. Apart from that, just about everyone worth mentioning got out of the day with chips to bag up. That's particularly true of Rui Cao, the relative unknown who mowed down the field today and managed to build a stack of close to 200,000. He slipped back just a little as the night wore on, but he still seems to be perched atop the leader board as the players trickle out of the room.
Cao appears to be the man to beat so far, but there are a few players in close contention. Oleh Okhotskyi rode an early double up to a strong finish as well, and young gun Marc Gork is right in the mix as well. It's too close to call right now; we'll wait for the official chip counts before we commit to Cao being the leader.
In any event, those who survived today's Day 1a (about 120 or so) will return on Thursday for Day 2. Tomorrow will see a fresh set of faces try their luck on the felt, and the tournament staff is optimistic for a strong showing to round out this combined field.
Thanks for joining us today, we'll see you tomorrow at noon!