There is a slightly overcast sky on the Cote d'Azur. It's a rather perfect day for playing poker, methinks. I would think our chip leader, Chad Brown, likely believes so as well. As you will find on EPT Monte Carlo chip counts page, Brown finished Day 1 proper with an impressive chip lead, 150,425. His lead over second place is bigger than many players' remaining stacks.

Chad Brown

The curtains have been drawn here and, as one person remarked, this room is as full as many tournaments' Day 1. Crowd control is in full effect day as the march toward the money becomes even more serious. We started with 339 players today, 113 of whom are fighting under the PokerStars banner (including 30 players who qualified for this event via FPP freerolls). There are 32 nationalities representing five continents among the remaining players. We're still seeing action from players who hail from the U.S. to Saudi America to New Zealand. Not to mention an impressive lot of Europeans.

Early action has seen three crowd favorites fall. Isabelle Mercier (AK vs 55), Anthony Holden (out on his second hand), and Chris Moneymaker have already found their way toward the door.

The Ed Report

One table that immediately caught the eye today was Table 32. On a 9 handed table we have Chris Moneymaker, Barry Greenstein, John Shipley, Andy Black and Dave Colclough. Andy Black is a dominant chip leader on the table and has had a promising start to the day using his chips to bully players out of pots.

Facing a 5K raise from the cut off Andy called in the SB. The flop was Kh-5s-5h and a 10K bet from Andy picked that one up. Shortly after on a board of 4d-7d-4s-6d Andy called a bet of 6500 from the other player involved. The 5h made this look even more dangerous and a 7K bet from Andy was enough to win that one as well. He is chipped up at over 100K now.

We have just had a 3 way all in on a table near to this with AK vs A10 vs A9. The AK held up and two players were elimnated in a 40K pot. There are quite a lot of shortstacks out there and with it costing 1500 a round they are being forced into playing more marginal hands than they might otherwise do.

The Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth has just more than doubled up. On a board of Jd-2d-9d-7c, Phil had pushed all in. He was standing up putting his fake leather jacket on, assuming the worst as there were two players behind him to act.The first folded and he was called by the other.Phil showed trip deuces against AJ with no diamond, so Phil was safe. A 7d on the river gave Phil a fullhouse and the pot.

He is up to around 43K.