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EPT Monte Carlo: Pre-game coverage

EPT Monte Carlo Day 1 begins--A photo gallery of poker faces from Day 1 and the story of FPP qualifer Kevin Tennant

For Day 1, the EPT producers have chosen to not tape a featured table for television. Somehow, in some organic way, a featured table has grown from the floor. Perhaps it had something to do with Patrick Bruel, one of France's biggest stars, sitting at the table with Roland De Wolfe, a recent WPT Paris winner.

For the first three hours of the day, the television cameras crowded around the table. The crowd pushed in, straining to get a look. Even WSOP final table finisher Andy Black came over to see what all the fuss was about. It was a gambling table where the chips few like the seagulls outside. Black was sporting an even longer beard and DeWolfe couldn't resist offering Black a wager.

DeWolfe pointed at Black's belly and said, "I'll bet you $1000 you can't grow the beard down to here by the World Series."

Black tugged at his beard, "Without extensions?" Then he said something I can't print here. But it was funny and involved a request for a Roland to contribute to the hair extension with some hair of his own.
As everyone knows, though, with gambling can come loss. And for Patrick Bruel, it was another man's gambling that sent the pop star to the rail. Within three hours, Bruel had pocket aces cracked twice, the final time by a rivered straight.

Now, Bruel's day is done.

Chip stacking

A cursory look at the room reveals some impressive chip stacks. Martin Wendt has more chips than we've been able to count at the moment (Update: Yeah, he's got about 40,000). Roland DeWolfe has chipped up to around 15K. Ram Vaswani is on about 17K. And Erik Sagstrom has more than doubled his stack and now has about 26K.