Tsang Tops Day 1 in Event #7; Riess; Deeb and Ferguson Among 35 Survivors
What started with just 10 players in the early afternoon turned out to smash yet another guarantee at the 2018 World Series of Poker Europe at Europe's biggest poker arena in the King's Casino in Rozvadov. Initially, Event #7: €2,200 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed was scheduled with a guaranteed prize pool of €200,000 and that was not only surpassed but almost doubled thanks to 187 entries in total.
The first 12 of 15 scheduled levels offered unlimited re-entries and the players took full advantage of that, as 106 unique players re-entered 81 times to create a prize pool of €358,853. Only the top 29 spots will receive a portion of that and at the end of level 15, the tournament screens showed 35 players remaining.
Hong Kong's Anson Tsang dominated the late stages of Day 1 and bagged up a very impressive stack of 931,000, while second-placed Ilya Bulychev follows with 748,000. After that, there is a pretty big gap to Chinese high roller Quan Zhou, who claimed 480,000 to his name. Other notables with big stacks include Aaron Duczak (307,000), Daniel Rezaei (302,000) and 2013 WSOP Main Event champion Ryan Riess (259,000).
Shaun Deeb bagged up the third-biggest stack in Event #6: €1,650 Mixed Pot-Limit Omaha/No-Limit Hold'em and will return to the feature table as of 3 p.m. local time on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018, to battle for his 5th bracelet and put an end to the 2018 WSOP Player of the Year race. One hour prior to that, Deeb will unbag 208,000 for Day 2 of the PLO Event as that's what he claimed to his name after firing three late bullets in this tournament.
Other notables among the 35 Day 1 survivors include Jan-Peter Jachtmann (224,000), Jason Gray (179,000), Chris Ferguson (171,000), Anthony Zinno (166,000), Chin Wei Lim (130,000), Roland Israelashvili (113,000), James Chen (95,000) and Allen Kessler (74,000). Day 2 will recommence with blinds of 3,000/6,000, the level duration increases to 60 minutes each for the remainder of the event and cards will be back in the air at 2 p.m. local time.
Action of the Day
With a slight delay, the first of three tournament days kicked off with a mere nine players spread over two tables. As soon as the bubble of Event #6 had burst, the field kept growing by the minute and the guarantee was met before the dinner break already. Among those to come and go without anything to show for were Hanh Tran, Dutch Boyd, Winfred Yu, €550 Pot-Limit Omaha runner-up Oleg Pavlyuchuk, Jeff Madsen, Martin Kabrhel and Jesper "Kipster" Hougaard to name just a few.
Defending champion Lukas Zaskodny ran out of chips on his first bullet in level two already after his rivered set of aces was no good against the turned straight of Xixiang Luo. Zaskodny quickly re-entered but joined the rail just before the end of the registration period, opting not to try again.
The chips were traded back and forth, big stacks vanished in the matter of an hour as notables such as Pedro Marques and Daniel Barriocanal went from hero to zero in quick succession. Anatolii Zyrin played five hands on his first bullet and busted, re-entered and almost tripled up right away before also joining the rail.
In the late stages of the day, several notables such as Dario Alioto, Ludovic Geilich, Martin Kabrhel and Danny Tang ran out of steam, too. Geilich busted in a three-way all in with Kabrhel as Ilya Bulychev flopped best and Tang's roller coaster ride came to an end at almost the same time one table over. He had the bets of it preflop with suited aces, but Aaron Duczak eventually got there with a flush.
Ismael Bojang, Ivan Leow and Yehoram Houri didn't survive the furios final either as they fell short of bagging and tagging. In Houri's case, it was a painful exit in the very last hand when the Frenchman flopped the nut straight and faced Ilya Bulychev's middle set. Instead of a paired board, running hearts gave the Russian a flush and Houri was gone.
Day 2 will see the 35 hopefuls head to the looming money bubble as of 2 p.m. local time before playing down to the official eight-handed final table. As usual, the PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor from start-to-finish.
Day 2 Seat Draw
| Table | Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150 | 1 | Roland Israelashvili | United States | 113,000 | 19 |
| 150 | 2 | Jason Gray | United Kingdom | 179,000 | 30 |
| 150 | 4 | Shaun Deeb | United States | 208,000 | 35 |
| 150 | 5 | Gergely Bartos | Hungary | 107,000 | 18 |
| 150 | 6 | Allen Kessler | United States | 74,000 | 12 |
| 150 | 7 | Aaron Duczak | Canada | 307,000 | 51 |
| 150 | 8 | Eemil Tuominen | Finland | 225,000 | 38 |
| 151 | 1 | Ludvig Sterner | Sweden | 388,000 | 65 |
| 151 | 2 | Anton Johansson | Sweden | 205,000 | 34 |
| 151 | 4 | Gisle Olsen | Denmark | 288,000 | 48 |
| 151 | 5 | Willm Engelke | Germany | 96,000 | 16 |
| 151 | 6 | Michal Mrakes | Czech Republic | 44,000 | 7 |
| 151 | 7 | Ihar Pliashko | Belarus | 120,000 | 20 |
| 151 | 8 | Ronald Keijzer | Netherlands | 141,000 | 24 |
| 152 | 1 | James Chen | Taiwan | 95,000 | 16 |
| 152 | 2 | Ryan Riess | United States | 259,000 | 43 |
| 152 | 3 | Quan Zhou | China | 480,000 | 80 |
| 152 | 4 | Pavel Binar | Czech Republic | 179,000 | 30 |
| 152 | 5 | Maksim Shuts | Belarus | 55,000 | 9 |
| 152 | 7 | Zoltan Szabo | Hungary | 120,000 | 20 |
| 152 | 8 | Chris Ferguson | United States | 171,000 | 29 |
| 165 | 1 | Anson Tsang | Hong Kong | 931,000 | 155 |
| 165 | 2 | Daniel Perkusic | Germany | 106,000 | 18 |
| 165 | 3 | Anthony Zinno | United States | 166,000 | 28 |
| 165 | 4 | Michal Schuh | Czech Republic | 224,000 | 37 |
| 165 | 6 | Hok Yiu Lee | China | 258,000 | 43 |
| 165 | 7 | Chin Wei Lim | Malaysia | 130,000 | 22 |
| 165 | 8 | Roman Cieslik | Germany | 92,000 | 15 |
| 166 | 1 | Daniel Rezaei | Austria | 302,000 | 50 |
| 166 | 3 | Jan-Peter Jachtmann | Germany | 224,000 | 37 |
| 166 | 4 | Alexander Norden | Sweden | 53,000 | 9 |
| 166 | 5 | Tomasz Gluszko | Poland | 126,000 | 21 |
| 166 | 6 | Ilya Bulychev | Russian Federation | 748,000 | 125 |
| 166 | 7 | Aleksandar Trajkovski | Macedonia | 104,000 | 17 |
| 166 | 8 | Andriy Lyubovetskiy | Ukraine | 168,000 | 28 |