Feddersen Goes Long to Capture the Day 1a Chip Lead at EPT Deauville
It’s Northern Europe in the middle of winter; we’re in a town in semi-hibernation and famed for horse race meets and film festivals during warmer months of the year. Did we mention it’s hard to get to? Can someone enlighten us why we came here again? Ah yes, it’s to return to one of the best value tournaments on the poker calendar – the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville! To be fair the town is chocolate box beautiful as well.
The French Poker Series (FPS) kicked off this poker festival a few days ago and boasted record-breaking numbers in their events. Today Day 1a of the main event drew 307 players, which is a little less than hoped for. Seeing as its Sunday for those who can play on PokerStars.fr and the fact that some small sporting event is taking place in New Orleans we expect tomorrow’s field to be nearly twice as big.
This didn’t mean there wasn’t lots of talent on show today. Leading the way for most of the second half of day was Patrick Schuhl, who bagged up 142,700 chips. His biggest pot win of the day saw his pocket queens help him to eliminate two players - holding pocket aces and ace-king respectively – after he made a set on the river. He was pipped to the chip-leading post by Jesper Feddersen who finished clear of the field with 188,900. The PokerStars qualifier finished with a flourish, eliminating Stelyan Georgiev right at play’s death. The Bulgarian called off his stack over three streets with 
on a 
board only to find Feddersen had back-doored into quads with 
.
Afterwards Feddersen informed us this was only his third live tournament having played one last year as practice and the FPS a couple of days ago. Mainly an online player, he qualified on PokerStars after accidentally registering but now he's top of the pack after Day 1a!
Other players who will enjoy tomorrow’s rest day knowing they have a good day’s work in the books are: Zimnan Ziiyard (121,000), Christophe Lesage (115,700), Jeff Hakim (114,700), Sergii Baranov (103,800), James Mitchell (102,700) and Team PokerStars Pro Matthias De Meulder 98,300.
Life’s all about equilibrium though, right? Poker life is like that too - for those to gain others have to lose. Dimitar Danchev could tell you all about that. The most recent EPT winner – from PCA a couple of weeks ago – saw the other side of the variance that exists in this beautiful yet painful game. He lost a chip-leading pot, and subsequently his tournament life, when his pocket aces were cracked by the pocket kings of Antoine Saout.
He was joined in the locker room by Jon Spinks, Martin Staszko, Nocholas Chouity, David Vamplew, Eugene Katchalov and Marcin Horecki.
The last two on this list were the other two Team PokerStars Pros in action today. Katchalov’s stack headed south from the off and never made its way back up to Normandy. Horecki had a very up and down day. He dropped to 6,000 chips early on before making a great recovery. Then he played a pot with the larger than life character of Baranov where the latter three-bet pre flop and bet every street on a 
board. Horecki confidently called all the way down only to be shown 
by Baranov! His fate was sealed soon after.
We do the same all over again tomorrow when a bumper and star-studded field will take to the baize for eight 75-minute levels. As per normal the play will start at 12pm CET and the PokerNews reporting team will be there throughout 12 more hours of poker action. Until its goodnight from France. Enjoy the Super Bowl!