Day 1a of the 2020 World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) Marrakech 15,000 MAD (€1,400) Main Event at the Casino de Marrakech, located in the heart of the Es Saadi Resort after 12 blind levels of 45-minutes each.
A total of 227 entries including 35 re-entries came out in full force with 61 players surviving. This crushed the 166 entries with 47 players surviving the last time the WSOP Circuit was in Marrakech in June.
After nine hours of action-packed poker, Ayman Jarrar bagged a chip leading stack of 351,000 for nearly 12-times the opening stack of 30,000 in chips.
Although the field was mostly French and Morrocan, the top five in chips counts was an international affair. Following Jarrar on the Day 1a leaderboard was Germany's Henrik Brockmann (235,000), France's Gael Dirig (224,000), Spain's Willy Wonka (210,000), and United Kingdom's Phillip Huxley (204,000).
Spain's Willy Wonka was not the person that owned the famous fictional chocolate factory but one of the handful of players that entered today's action using a nickname. He held the chip lead for almost the entire day before giving away more than a third of his stack near the end of Day 1a.
Meanwhile, Huxley entered Day 1a as the defending champion after shipping the WSOP Circuit Marrakech Main Event for 947,780 MAD ($99,632) the last time the event was held at Casino de Marrakech in June. Huxley was off to a slow start and headed to the dinner break after Level 9 with less than a starting stack.
The defending champion shared during the break that if he wasn't able to bag a stack today he wasn't planning to re-enter tomorrow with many juicy side events on the schedule.
He won't have to worry about that as he chipped up to 50,000 in chips just after the dinner break before he doubled up with big slick against the ace-queen held by Stefan Bittger to 100,000.
Near the end of the day, he doubled up again to around 200,000. He three-bet jammed his stack with king-jack suited with a flush draw on the flop only to run into the two pair held by Anas Tadini with six-three. The flush draw completed on the turn and the river blanked for Tadini to give Huxley the double-up.
PMU.fr is the online sponsor of the Main Event and in addition to the more than 20 qualifiers in attendance for the Main Event, a handful of Team PMU.fr Pros entered the field with both Paul Guichard (130,000) and Erwann Pecheux (65,500) finding a bag to Saturday's Day 2.
PokerNews will be on the tournament floor to provide updates for tomorrow's Day 1b starting at 1 p.m. CET. Stay tuned as we provide coverage from beginning to end of the 2020 WSOP Circuit Marrakech Main Event.
running out on the board.
on the board and got a call from Ben Masbah.
completed the board on the river and Masbah quickly called off his remaining stack of around 30,000. Willy Wonka turned over 
and Masbah began to walk away from the table. Since it was an all-in situation, the dealer turned over his cards to show he had 
.
appeared on the flop. The 
on the turn didn't help Claude Franco and he was eliminated after the 