European Poker Tour Snowfest -- Day 1A

Day 1A of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Snowfest kicked off yesterday at the Alpine Palace Card Casino in Austria with 270 players. With the first starting day usually less busy than the second, the field is anticipated to grow close to the event’s cap of 600 with the addition of the day 1B hopefuls.

The 270-strong field that did show up on day 1A was populated by many top class and up-and-coming poker players including EPT London champ Aaron Gustavsson, Kyiv winner Max Lykov, Dominik Nitsche, Julien Brecard, Max Pescatori, plus Team PokerStars Pro members Daniel Negreanu, Chad Brown, Arnaud Mattern, Marcin Horecki, Thomas Bichon, and one of the latest additions, Belgian twin brothers Mattias and Christophe De Meulder.

After the nine levels of play and the one-hour long staggered dinner break only 120 remained as many players saw more highs and lows inside the casino than on the slopes.

The first couple of hours saw the back of the above mentioned former professional skier, Marcin Horecki, and it wasn’t too long before the field was missing Brown and Bichon also, with Gustavsson following a little later.

Late-session busts included Marion Nedellec, Jeff Sarwer, and one half of the Belgian duo, Matthias De Meulder. Arnaud Mattern saw a day of ups and downs as he ran into a flopped set twice yet managed to stay alive. He was very short stacked but made a comeback before end of play.

Another Frenchman who ended the day well was PokerStars sponsored player Julien Brecard [pictured left]. Brecard was celebrating his 31st birthday, but what better present to get than to finish among chip leaders with 238,100 at the end of day 1A.

The top 10 in chips are:

David Winterberger (Germany) 290,200
Berhard Perner (Austria) 257,500
Julien Brecard (France) 238100
Brent Wheeler (USA) 193,600
Mike Gorodinsky (USA) 160,700
Janko Medja (Slovenia) 158,900
Christian Oppersklaski (Germany) 146,800
Johannes Strassmann (Germany) 134,300
Alex Kravchenko (Russia) 129,600
Alexander Pozdnyakov (Russia) 129,500

German David Winterberger, whose name translated to English ironically is winter mountains, leads the troop at the moment with 290,200. But today many, many more will take to the felt to start the nine levels all over again and find their own leader. The field is anticipated to include Bertrand Grospellier, Dario Minieri, Boris Becker, Sandra Naujoks, Benjamin Kang, Jan Heitmann, Florian Langmann, Luca Pagano, Lex Veldhuis, Sorel Mizzi plus many more.

You can follow all of the action from the snowy mountains of Austria via the PokerStars blog feed daily, and later this week you can enjoy the final two days of the event as they happen on the EPT Live video feed. Don’t forget to check back for full recaps of each day right here also, with many photos courtesy of Neil Stoddart and our friends at PokerStars.

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