European Poker Tour Deauville -- Day 1AChaos Reigns in Deauville with 140 Casualties on Day 1A |
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The second PokerStars European Poker Tour event of 2010, (although only the first to be held within Europe this year) began yesterday at noon local time in Deauville in Northern France.
The €5,000+€300 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event attracted 339 players to the Casino Barriere in Deauville for day 1A, but by the end of nine chaotic levels 140 hopefuls were eliminated, leaving 199 behind to anticipate day 2.
Some familiar faces spotted amidst a sea of French players included Arnaud Mattern, Remy Biechel, Antoine Saout, Pierre Neuville, Mike McDonald [pictured right], Andrew Chen, Patrick Bueno, Dara O’Kearney, Jamel Maistriaux, Victor Ilyukhin, Michel Abecassis, and Cristiano Blanco. Topping the lot by end of play was a PokerStars qualifier from Romania, Robert Cezarescu, who bagged up 216,900 in chips before bedtime.
Pocket aces got the blood pumping many times throughout the day. On one occasion a player in early position raised to 1,750 and November Niner Antoine Saout reraised to 4,125. When it got back to the original raiser, he declared he was “all in,” and Saout instantly replied, “Call.”
The Frenchman flipped over A
A
while his opponent revealed A
K. The board was dealt Q 4 3 4
8, and Saout picked up a stack worth 45,400.
However, aces were often very unkind, and here are two examples of this:
After being beaten by an overset and damaging his stack, Adam Lounis got it all in preflop in the very next level with pocket aces. His opponent held pocket jacks, but a jack came on the flop, and Lounis waved his tournament life goodbye.
Elsewhere, a player in mid-position bet 4,000 and Guillaume de la Gorce made a raise from the button. Team PokerStars Pro member Katja Thater moved all in from the small blind for around 16,000 and got one caller in De la Gorce. Thater flipped over pocket kings and moaned as she saw De la Gorce’s pocket aces. The board put Thater out of her misery as it fell K Q 9 Q 10, and she raked in her freshly-won chips.
The top 10 in chips by end of play were:
Robert Cezarescu Romania (PokerStars qualifier) 216,900
Vladimir Geshkenbein Switzerland 198,500
Corneliu Cretu Romania 186,000
Tony Cousin France 162,900
Julien Riou France 156,900
Oleh Okhotskyi Ukraine 155,400
Jamel Maistriaux Belgium 154,200
Martin Kabrhel Czech Republic 152,200
Jean Baptiste Varvat France 130,300
El Mostafa Bel Khayate Morocco 119,700
Team Pokerstars Pro members Peter Eastgate, Dario Minieri, and Jude Ainsworth, plus the Hendon Mob’s Joe Beevers were among players who swapped over from the first starting day to day 1B. Today they will join a host of other well-known names such as Ludovic Lacay, Juha Helppi, Praz Bansi, Jeff Sarwer, Jonathan Aguiar, Freddy Deeb, Isabelle Mercier, and Team PokerStars Pro members Luca Pagano, Alex Kravchenko, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Jude Ainsworth, Vicky Coren, and Greg Raymer.
Check back tomorrow to see how day 1B went and to find out just how many players in total turned up to play and how much they are playing for in this season’s EPT Deauville. In the meantime here is a PokerStars clip of ElkY talking about Deauville and French poker in general:
Watch EPT Deauville 2010: ElkY on PokerStars.tv
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