Day 1a: It's All Over
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While the bracing winter wind kept players within a short radius of the Hilton (home base and tournament centre) today, the first flight of players took to the felt attempting to build their 30,000 starting stacks into towers which could take them safely into the next days' play. There were 191 Day 1a entrants, including Team PokerStars Pros Arnaud Mattern and Marcin Horecki (the former had an early exit while the latter made it through the day). They were joined by many familiar faces from the EPT: Sorel Mizzi, Maria Maceiras, Joao Barbosa, and Anton Wigg.
The ninth level saw, however, a brace of new big stacks suddenly take over the top of the leaderboard and battle amongst themselves for the end of day lead. Elias Brussianos, who ended up in the top spot with 199,600, will be looking to better his 38th place in this very event last year, while Ruslan Prydryk (181,800) has among his previous results a win in May's RPT in Yalta, and a final table at EPT Warsaw last year. Also just behind Brussianos is Nicolas Babel who spent much of the last two levels in the lead but ended the day with 191,200. Meanwhile Fernando Brito is also up there in the chip counts on 160,500 and will be looking to extend his lead in the EPT Player of the Year rankings.
Expected on Day 1b are a fair few more tables, with a heavier dusting of PokerStars Pro players, including Johnny Lodden, Liv Boeree, and Marcel Luske. The second 'shuffle up and deal' of the tournament will be shouted at noon tomorrow (local time in Prague).