Volpe Leads High Roller into Day 2
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The 2013 PokerStars.com European Poker Tour London £10,000 High Roller began late this afternoon at 4 p.m. local time. That gave players enough time to have their bangers and mash, fish and chips, or anything else from any number of the restaurants that are dotted around the bustling capital of England.
Eight levels was the order of the day, with a one-hour dinner break nicely placed in the middle. So far, there have been 127 entries, and a third day for this event is probably a necessity after it was originally slated for two — players will have until 11:45 a.m. to register tomorrow morning. At the end of the day, it was the man who has been in quite the form as of late, the man in the hat, Paul Volpe. He finished the day as chip leader with 239,000 in chips. He won an early pot against former EPT winner Martin Finger, then never looked back.
End-of-Day Chip Counts for Day 1
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Volpe | 239,000 |
| 2 | Vicky Coren | 211,700 |
| 3 | Davidi Kitai | 171,700 |
| 4 | Gautam Sabharwal | 170,700 |
| 5 | Ognjen Sekularac | 168,000 |
| 6 | Dimitar Danchev | 162,800 |
| 7 | JC Alvarado | 159,600 |
| 8 | Ramin Hajiyev | 155,500 |
| 9 | David Boyaciyan | 149,400 |
| 10 | Scott Seiver | 140,000 |
Throughout Day 1, there were a healthy number of re-entries. Bryn Kenney busted his first stack in only his second hand and became one of many players who had to fire two bullets at this event. Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier was another such player after calling off his stack and running into Dan O'Brien's set of fours. Marvin Rettenmaier and Anton Wigg also busted their first bullet, the latter had made a big move against the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Dimitar Danchev. but the Bulgarian managed to call the bluff.
Jonathan Duhamel was unlucky enough to fire both bullets, but came up empty twice. First, he lost with a straight flush draw against Volpe's set, and then his second bullet proved a dud against Vanessa Selbst.
For some players, like Toby Lewis, David Gent and Tony G, one buy-in lost was enough, and they were among those eliminated before play was over. Max Silver suffered a horrible set-over-set altercation against Salman Behbehani early on and also didn't reload. Selbst also seemed to decide that she didn't want to re-enter after turning top pair into a bluff on the river against Yann Dion's overpair.
Elsewhere, players such as Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier, Mike "Timex" McDonald and Max Greenwood all leapt straight into the High Roller after their eliminations today from the Main Event. There's no rest for the wicked, particularly as the former two began goading each other across Twitter with each sizable pot lost resulting in a healthy amount of needling from the other.
Team PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren had an interesting day. She got off to a great start boosting herself up to around 90,000 before the dinner break before missing the first 30 minutes of Level 5. The reason? She'd managed to lock herself in her own house and had to get help from the neighbors to get back out again. Coren spent the latter part of the day debating the existence of badgers with Albert Daher while also winning a decent pot against him towards the end of the day to push her stack above the 200,000 mark.
Sam Trickett, one of the best known high-stakes players in the UK, was about to finish the day with 90,000, but then got cold-decked in two of the final four hands to get eliminated. He tweeted that it is unlikely that he will get up and reload for the restart tomorrow.
A few of the nose-bleeders still remain, though, with both Viktor Blom and Luke Schwartz late registering this event. They've both made it through to the second day alongside JC Alvarado, Scott Seiver, Kevin MacPhee and Fabian Quoss.
Again, there could still more entries tomorrow as players have until 11:45 a.m. to register for the tournament, and we'll keep you posted on the field size. The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be back on Friday at 12 p.m. GMT for the second day of the High Roller event, so you'd better join us.