Jan Suchanek showed his jovial side early in the day at PokerStars Championship Barcelona €10,300 PLO High Roller, telling David Frieling he accepted all slowrolls, no matter how big the pot.
However, he showed when it comes time to get in the proverbial trenches and start trading blows across the felt, Suchanek showed he can be deadly and efficient at mowing down opponents and sweeping up their chips. Suchanek has a mind-boggling lead at the close of Day 1 with 1,087,000, nearly double second-place stack Laszlo Bujtas' 598,000.
Suchanek, a Czech player who is a longtime New Zealand resident, wasn't afraid to get chips in the middle from start to finish and had a big stack almost the whole way through. The biggest boost came when he eliminated fellow big stack Gavin Cochrane at the end of the night after the three table redraw.
Besides those two top stacks, 19 other players made it through the long 13-hour grind. Others advancing to Day 2 included online stars Yuri "theNERDguy" Martins and Leo "ISILDRooN" Nordin, as well as bracelet winners Peter Eichhardt, Norbert Szecsi and Jan-Peter Jachtmann. Online nosebleeds legend Ben Tollerene made it as well, though his stack of 128,500 means he has work to do.
None of the players — not even Suchanek — can rest on their laurels and count on a cash. There's still six eliminations to go before the money is reached, and given the volatile nature of PLO, that can mean major swings. For example, players like Isaac Haxton, Henrik Eide and Jean-Noel Thorel all occupied spots near the top of the leaderboard but failed to even make the redraw.
Others busting out at least once in the jam-packed single reentry event included Viktor Blom, Jens Lakemeier, Mike Watson, Stephen Chidwick and Bryn Kenney.
The tournament drew a very healthy 111 entries after a somewhat slow start that saw the first card off the deck delayed by 30 minutes. The first-place prize will be a very handsome €277,200. To find out who will take that down, come right back to PokerNews at 12:30 on Thursday for more live coverage.
left Szecsi playing danglers for two pair, but Koliakoudakis hit a straight on the 
turn and held on the 
river to double.
