Westmorland Tops Day 1 in Event #10: €25,000 NLH Platinum High Roller; Martini Continues Hot Run
The most expensive tournament of the 2021 World Series of Poker Europe festival has concluded Day 1 and easily surpassed the €1 million guarantee at the King's Resort in Rozvadov. After 12 levels of 40 minutes each in Event #10: €25,000 NLH Platinum High Roller, a field of 52 entries was cut down to 33 survivors and the late registration and re-entry period remains open for high-stakes contenders from near and far.
A late surge in the final levels of the night propelled Jordan Westmorland to the top of the leaderboard by a wide margin as he increased his starting stack more than seven-fold. Two knockouts in the final two levels saw Westmorland's stack skyrocket to 3,715,000 and he has almost as many chips at his disposal as Julien Martini (2,240,000) and Johan Guilbert (1,845,000) have combined.
Top 10 Chip Counts Day 1 in Event #10: €25,000 NLH Platinum High Roller
| Position | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jordan Westmorland | United States | 3,715,000 | 186 |
| 2 | Julien Martini | France | 2,240,000 | 112 |
| 3 | Johan Guilbert | France | 1,845,000 | 92 |
| 4 | Laszlo Bujtas | Hungary | 1,465,000 | 73 |
| 5 | Fahredin Mustafov | Bulgaria | 1,400,000 | 70 |
| 6 | Tom-Aksel Bedell | Norway | 1,343,000 | 67 |
| 7 | Jack Sinclair | United Kingdom | 1,278,000 | 64 |
| 8 | Eelis Pärssinen | Finland | 1,077,000 | 54 |
| 9 | Andrea Ricci | Italy | 1,076,000 | 54 |
| 10 | Christophe Panetti | Switzerland | 1,026,000 | 51 |
Big names with above-average stacks also include Laszlo Bujtas, Jack Sinclair, Eelis Pärssinen, and Joni Jouhkimainen. Martini comes fresh off a victory in Event #8: €2,500 Short Deck, during which he claimed his second gold bracelet. The Frenchman then entered the high-stakes contest and bagged up the second-biggest stack. Likewise, Italy's Andrea Ricci had a successful at the poker tables as he finished fourth in Event #5: €550 NLH COLOSSUS before running up a top 10 stack as well.
Notable casualties on Day 1 included the WSOP bracelet winners Armando D'Avanzo, Ole Schemion and Martin Kabrhel along with Elias Gutierrez, Tamas Adamszki, and Christopher Puetz. The rise of Westmorland culminated in the final two levels when he first knocked out Manuel Fritz in a set-over-set scenario and then won a big flip during the final hands of the night against fellow big stack Tom Vogelsang.
All those wishing to enter or re-enter the tournament can do so for the first two 40-minute levels on Day 2. The action is slated to get underway at noon local time with level 13 and blinds of 10,000/20,000 and a big blind ante of 20,000, which gives late entrants 25 big blinds when the cards go back in the air at King's Resort.
Even though the tournament was initially scheduled as a two-day event, it has been expanded to a third day as the final table will be streamed on Wednesday, December 1, 2021, on the PokerGO platform. The PokerNews live reporting team will be back to provide all the action until a winner has been crowned.