Baranov Bags the Biggest Stack on Day 1a
![[user66118]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
That's all she wrote for Day 1a of the PokerStars.com EPT Madrid. Eight levels have come and gone in short order, and the 125 players who began the day have been reduced to just about half that number. Leading the crowd into the bagging and tagging is Sergiy Baranov who managed to amass 152,500 chips over the course of the day.
Among those who chose the less-popular starting day were eight members of Team PokerStars Pro. Martin Staszko, the newest member of the Team, could not escape the first few levels before going extinct, and Marcin Horecki did likewise. Horecki flopped a set with pocket tens, and he ended up with all of his chips in the middle at the end of the 
board. Juan Jose Chavez had managed to run down a winner with 
, though, and Horecki was forced to the exits with another early and unfortunate EPT bust-out. Just at the tail end of the day, Pierre Neuville ran into Anton Ionel's 
to end his day and join the other two on the rail. That leaves Henrique Pinho (25,100), Alex Kravchenko (28,900), Arnaud Mattern (18,500 and a broken foot), and Toni Judet (20,100) to return for PokerStars on Day 2.
Others to have come and gone over the course of Day 1a were Roberto Romanello, Juha Helppi, Richard Lyndaker, Konstantin Puchkov, Zimnan Ziyard, and JP Kelly.
On the flip side of things, we have a few gentlemen flush with chips at night's end. Courtesy of that big knockout pot, Ionel's stack of 142,500 is one of the biggest in the room, but it looks like it's second biggest. Early in the day, Baranov took a big chunk from Konstantin Puchkov to climb into six figures, and he'd not look back from there. He finished up play with 152,500 chips in his bag, more than anyone else in the room. Others flush with chips include Efren Garcia (130,100), Andries Swarrt (119,800), and Martins Adeniya (95,000).
The 67 survivors from this opening flight will get the day off tomorrow. A fresh batch of players are set to take their place on Tuesday, and we'd expect to see a vastly larger crowd take their seats for the Day 1b flight. We'll be back here at noon to play another eight levels, and we hope to see you back here with us.
Until then, ciao from Madrid!