Verkhoturov Tops Day 1a of The Big Wrap in Rozvadov
There are very few Pot-Limit Omaha tournaments with a big guaranteed prize pool, let alone one with seven figures, but that didn't stop the King's Casino and Resort in Rozvadov to put €1,000,000 on the line for all four-card lovers in yet another edition of The Big Wrap. With a buy-in of €2,350, that requires more than 450 entries in total and the first of two starting days attracted a field of 128 entries in total, consisting of 107 unique players and 21 re-entries.
If there was any doubt over who will be the overnight chip leader, Sergey Verkhoturov put an end to those thoughts at the end of the penultimate level when he turned a full house in a three-bet pot and sent Calogero Lupo to the rail in one of the biggest pots of the day so far. It vaulted the Belorussian to more than ten times the starting stack and he ended the day with an astonishing 1,070,000 in chips.
Second in chips is Kyrylo Shkrob (494,000) followed by Salavat Shafigullin (475,000) and Tim Hoffmann (427,000). Other notables that advanced with a healthy stack after the first of two starting days were Robert Cowen (410,000), Ilyaz Dosikov (385,000), Leonid Yanovski (379,000), and Han Kuo (368,000).
King's regular The Talk was one of 10 players to already have secured a stack for Day 2 thanks to the online Day 1 on partypoker and managed to bag up more than double of what he already had at his disposal from the virtual felt, advancing to Day 2 with 352,000. He needed a second bullet for it, though, after he was eliminated in the first level of the day.
Many other familiar faces of the European poker circuit headed to Rozvadov to take a shot at the seven-figure prize pool. The exploits of Maksim Shuts, Robert Zipf, Stanislav Koleno, Andrej Desset, Jesper Hougaard, Marcel Luske and Samuel Albeck were not crowned by success just yet. However, they may all enter once more on Day 1b and also in the first two levels of Day 2 with a fresh stack of 100,000.
The first bullet of Tomasz Kozub went down in flames when his flopped top two pair and gutshot straight draw ended up second-best to the set of aces of Yves Henschel and he ran out of chips a second time towards the end of the night. The second entry of Netanel Amedi ended with a flopped set of aces when Petr Svoboda got there with a runner-runner straight. The luck of Svoboda ran out soon after as his wrap failed to pick up any help against Kyrylo Shkrob.
Towards the end of the night, the late entries and bustouts from Besim Hot, Martin Kabrhel and Renato Nowak brought a sudden surge of intense PLO action to the tables and fewer than half of the field remained when it came to bagging and tagging.
The second and final starting day kicks off on Saturday, September 14th, 2019, at 4 p.m. local time and the PokerNews team will be back on the floor to provide all the action from start to finish.