Euro Poker: EPT Baden Day One RecapSmaller Field but Intense Competition Remains at European Poker Tour Baden |
|
Day one of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Baden Open saw 282 players ante up the $8,000 buy-in, creating a total prize pool of €2.14 million. While the number of players fell from 331 in 2006, the prize pool was up almost €500,000 as a result of the increased buy-in.
Play got under way in the medieval spa town of Baden, just outside Vienna, Austria, at 6 p.m. Central European Time and was confined to six levels. This is in contrast to the nine levels played in both Barcelona and London. It is also remarkable that play was spread from Sunday to Wednesday rather than the usual Tuesday to Saturday.
The field contained a high proportion of previous EPT winners, including Andreas Hoivold, Sander Lylloff, Ram Vaswani, Pascal Perrault, Roland De Wolfe, Noah Boeken, Patrik Antonius, and Mads Andersen.
Team PokerStars was represented with an impressive presence, including Vanessa Rousso, Katja Thater, Hevad Khan, Dario Minieri, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Luca Pagano, Noah Boeken, Andre Akari, and Barry Greenstein.
Other notable players included Surinder Sunar, Alan Smurfit, Jani Sointula, Marcel Luske, Dave Colclough, Barny Boatman, Andy Black, Mark Vos, Jeff Lisandro, and recent WSOPE main-event winner Annette Obrestad.
Obrestad, fresh from her poker holiday in Aruba, took an early vacation from the tournament, exiting after a couple of hours. At the first break, Andy Black was looking somber. "I'm down to about 3,500 in chips. I had ace-seven with an ace-seven on the board, and the other guy had pocket aces. But I shouldn't have been in the pot," he shook his head ruefully. Within an hour he'd lost his remaining chips.
The pace of the tournament was much less frenetic than both Barcelona and London, but the poker was no less volatile. Former Dublin EPT-winner De Wolfe arrived late and exited early, John Kabbaj unwittingly ran into aces twice for an early bath, and Minieri's aggressive style was to the fore as he accumulated and lost chips like hot potatoes.
At the end of the evening, 156 players remained. The top 10 in chips were:
The payouts for the final table are:
First - €670,800
Second - €375,000
Third - €225,000
Fourth - €160,820
Fifth - €132,900
Sixth - €105,000
Seventh - €83,600
Eighth - €60,000
The payouts for the remaining 16 players are:
Ninth-10th - €38,600
11th-12th - €30,000
13th-14th - €25,700
15th-16th - €19,300
17th-24th - €12,860
Play resumes at 2 p.m. Central European Time. Check Cardplayer.com for daily recaps of the main action.
Copyright © 2001-2024
CardPlayer.com. All rights reserved.
