Yesterday marked the start of the two-week long Prague Poker Festival with the World Poker Tour Prague kicking off proceedings with their €3,500 Re-Entry Main Event. By the time registration for Day 1a was closed, after four levels of play, a total of 231 players had entered the tournament and amongst them were some of the biggest names in European poker.
Day 1a of tournaments is usually the least popular of the two starting flights as players prefer to enter Day 1b so they do not have a gap in their playing schedule plus it means they have to spend less money on hotels etc. This usually leads to Day 1a being full of amateur players and Day 1b being pro heavy but because WPT Prague is a re-entry event, meaning if you entered Day 1a and was busted out you can re-enter on Day 1b with a full starting stack of 30,000.
This lead to a who’s who of European poker descending on the King’s Casino yesterday all hoping they would make it through having just fired the one bullet, something 93 players managed to do, amongst them November Nine member Eoghan O’Dea (142,600 chips), Tobias Reinkemeier (109,700), Dermot Blain (105,000) and James Akenhead (89,700).
Some of the bigger names that will have to take full advantage of being able to re-enter the Main Event include Per Linde, Melanie Weisner Marvin Rettenmaier, Mike McDonald and two Brits in the shape of EPT Vilamoura champion Toby Lewis and Chris Moorman, the latter recently becoming the first player to win more than $7,500,000 from online poker tournaments.
There is a chance that WPT Prague will become the biggest European WPT Event in history. That record was broken twice last year, first when Sam El Sayed outlasted the 543 strong crowd in Amneville then when Dmitry Gromov became the WPT Vienna champion a tournament that attracted 555 entrants. Just getting 300 today will mean the first place prize will be a bankroll boosting €400,000, making for a very Merry Christmas for someone!
WPT Prague Day 1a Top Five Chip Counts
1.) Jan Ramik: 209,300
2.) Jan Bendik: 180,300
3.) Jan Brandejs: 170,000
4.) Eran Malkin: 169,200
5.) Adria Balaguer: 154,000
