And there we have it; day 1b is in the books. In keeping with what we have seen countless times before, this was not a day for the faint hearted. Right from the off, when the seat draw pitted Bertrand Grospellier, Gus Hansen, Michael Tureniec, Jesper Hougaard and Annette Obrestad on a table that went beyond just plain death and into the afterlife, this was always going to be a frantic eight hours of play.
There were 236 players at the start of the day; there are fewer than 90 players left now. All but one of those superstar table-mates faded and died. Only Obrestad remained rooted to her seat on table one as the other legends of the world game drifted away. But they're not alone on the outskirts of this tournament: we also lost Johnny Lodden, Julian Thew, William Thorsen, Peter Eastgate, Ivan Demidov, Dario Minieri, Stephen Chidwick, Danny Ryan and Theo Jorgensen.
We lost Lodden
Thorson was thawed
ElkY eliminated
Eastgate ousted
Jorgensen's fall was among the most dramatic. The man who will enter the boxing ring with Gus Hansen on Saturday went from Rocky Balboa to flea-weight no-hoper within a matter of about 10 level-seven minutes. He first took pocket kings up against Andrea Benelli's pocket eights, only to watch the Italian four-flush him for about 40,000 of his chips.
Theo Jorgensen
Jorgensen was soon seen on the ropes and then the canvass after the beats from Benelli kept on coming.
For the Italian, though, it was an entirely different story. He made a final table in Warsaw late last year, followed up with a fourth place in Deauville last month, and now he is the undisputed overnight chip leader, bagging approximately 100,000 chips as I type. He was the tormentor of Ivan Demidov in the early levels, then there were the altercations with Jorgensen, and soon we were looking up the Italian word for "steam-roller".
Andrea Benelli
Italians have been the emerging national force on the EPT this season, but if an Italian triumphs in the land of the Scandi, the cat will well and truly be among the pigeons.
But that is getting way ahead of ourselves. There are another three full days of this one yet, and surviving from the carnage to take their place tomorrow are also the Team PokerStars Pro duo of Isabelle Mercier and Alexander Kravchenko. Then there's Ola Brandborn, Ilari Sahamies, Martin Wendt, Dennis Plejdrup, Andreas Hoivold and Orjan Hold, as well as all those returning from day 1a.
Flight Commander KravchenkoYou can read all about it ahead of tomorrow's action with each, any, some, many, all, or none of the following links:
Redefining "Table of Death"
And how about this bunch?
On Court One: Boris Becker
Other tough tables
Early fallers
Dario Minieri: Nothing up his sleeves
Free parking? When poker meets Monopoly
Ladies. And "Gentlemen..."
Tureniec toast
Numbers
Gus Hansen: Why are people?
The sound of silence and hysterics
Closing the books
Benelli, Brandborn and Jorgensen
Level seven rumbles
The last outlaws
Eight levels played ... and relax
And we're citizens of the world on PokerStars blog and have been known to get lost and ask for directions loudly and in a patronising manner in each of the following languages: German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish.
Video blogs are always available on PokerStars.tv jostling with archive footage from all previous PokerStars events. There's quite a lot of that over there these days.
The full chip counts for the survivors of both flights of day one are over at the chip count page. The details of the prize pool were announced today and duly published on the prizewinners page.
All static pictures come (c) Neil Stoddart. More of all of this tomorrow. Goodnight!
