Day 1a Concludes
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Play began just about eight hours ago with 129 hopefuls taking to the felt in the Kyiv Sports Palace, a gymnasium-turned-poker-theater. The turnout was less than robust, but the staff seems satisfied with the number given the eleventh-hour move from Moscow here to Kyiv. Among those who played this first flight were a whole slew of recreational players, about 25 PokerStars online qualifiers, and a little sprinkling of big-name pros to round things out. Some of the notables who came to play were Team PokerStars Pros Luca Pagano and Alex Kravchenko, another Alex (Fitzgerald), another Russian (Nikolay Evdakov), one woman (Wendy Monosky), 2009 bracelet winner John Carsten, Dutchies Menno Mulder and Raoul Refos, along with Arnaud Mattern, Vadim Shlez, and "Miami John" Cernuto.
Out of that list, only Luca Pagano failed to make Day 2 after turning a bad two pair and losing his stack to his opponent's set about midway through the day. His name is just one on the list of 36 players who couldn't escape these first seven levels.
That leaves 93 players who still have chips to left to fight with on Day 2. Alex Fitzgerald, Nikolay Evdakov, and Alex Kravchenko managed to build up stacks of more than 40,000, while Miami John and Arnaud Mattern both crept over 50,000. Everyone's looking up at Mihaylo Demidenko though, the young Russian who charged to the top of the field during the last third of the day. His 145,125 chips puts him firmly atop the scoreboard, and there's a pretty fair gap between him and the majority of the pack.
That pack will take tomorrow off to relax under the Ukrainian sun as a fresh batch of faces will take their seats for the second flight. The staff expects a bit of a stronger number tomorrow, but they'll be thrilled if we can reach the 300 mark for total players.
That's all she wrote for Day 1a then. We hope you'll be back tomorrow for 1b at high noon. Until then, На добраніч from Ukraine! Goodnight!