European Poker Tour Vienna -- Day 1B

Day 1B of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Vienna attracted 353 players to the Austrian capital’s Kursalon Palace including some of the best in the business.

That number was cut to 161 by end of play, meaning day 2 will see a combined field of 278. The player with the most chips overall is British pro Laurence Houghton. He enters day 2 of the €5,300 buy-in main event with 190,300 in chips.

The EPT’s second visit to Vienna is a lot different to the first. The buy-in has increased by €3,300, the location is a grand historic concert hall, and the field on day 1B in 2010 was bigger than the overall field in 2005. The EPT Vienna 2010 can now be known as the richest poker tournament that Austria has ever seen as it has attracted a total of 587 players from 48 countries, creating a prize pool of €2,935,000.

Only 80 players will be paid, so the race to the €700,000 top prize is now on. Of the players still in the running is defending champion Pascal Perrault. Others through to day 2 include Team PokerStars Pro players Daniel Negreanu, Jose Barbero, Jan Heitmann, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Dario Minieri, and Richard Toth, plus Team PokerStars SportStars Boris Becker and Fatima Moreira de Melo. Another name to add to the list is Tom Dwan. Dwan didn’t make an appearance on day 1B until after the dinner break, but managed to turn his stack of less than 20,000 into 61,900 by the end of the day.

Here is the overall top 10 in chips going into day 2:

Laurence Houghton (UK) 190,300
Szymon Pieszczoch (Poland) 183,300
Sergii Baranov (Ukraine) 183,200
Claudio Simaldoni (Switzerland) 181,000
Giacomo Maisto (Italy) 172,400
Ramon Cserei (Romania) 168,300
Martin Hruby (Czech Republic) Team PokerStars Pro 159,000
Jose Severino (Panama) 156,000
Daniel Biro (Hungary) 151,800
Brian Green (Costa Rica) 144,600
Stjepan Jokic (Croatia) 141,300

Some players who won’t be returning are David Benyamine, John Juanda, Kevin MacPhee, Alain Roy, Ramzi Jelassi, and Team PokerStars Pro members Bertrand Grospellier, Rino Mathis, Salvatore Bonavena, Dario Minieri, JP Kelly, and Luca Pagano.

CardPlayer.com will be bringing you daily recaps as things begin to heat up at EPT Vienna. In the meantime check out the PokerStars blog feed for all the action from day 2.

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