Andrew Hulme Leads Day 1a of the 2019 PokerStars EPT Prague €1,100 EPT National
It took nearly 17 full levels of play for Day 1a of the 2019 PokerStars EPT Prague €1,100 EPT National to reach its conclusion for the day. The first of three starting flights drew 624 entrants with play scheduled to go until the field reached 15 percent of its overall total, and that number of 94 was reached with 4:18 remaining in Level 17 (3,000/6,000/6,000).
Play was loaded with action all day long and well into the evening until the final hour of the night when the pace slowed down due to the pending money bubble. Several large stacks were visible throughout the room and it seemed as if there could be any one of a handful of players to emerge atop the counts when chips went into bags. However, it was Andrew Hulme who ultimately claimed that title after finishing the day with 551,000.
Hot on his heels were Andrej Desset (545,000), Alexiz Rozenblat (532,000), and Narcis Nedelcu (525,000), and they were the only other players to finish the day with more than a half-million in chips. Danilo Velasevic rounds out that top five having just missed that mark, finishing the day with 499,000.
Other notables to advance included Jose Quintas (432,000), Rifat Palevic (322,000), Davidi Kitai (170,000), and Gaelle Baumann (60,000).
Many others were many other players who were not as fortunate on the day, and with the tournament only allowing one entry per flight, those players found themselves on the rail for the event for the rest of the night. Among those who found themselves dry on chips before the day’s end included 2017 EPT National Prague champion Georgios Vrakas, Jason Gray, Michal Mrakes, Julien Martini, and Jean-René Fontaine. Czech WSOP Main Event Final Table participants Vojtech Ruzicka and Martin Staszko also found themselves among the list of players to not advance.
Two more flights remain, with Day 1b commencing at noon local time on Sunday and Day 1c following at 7 p.m. Sunday evening with a turbo format. All yet to advance may fire once into each remaining flight to try to earn their way into Day 2, where all returning players will find themselves in the money. However, larger expected fields on Sunday mean that there is still a lot of work left to be done when the field condenses as the tournament is not scheduled to play down to a winner until Day 4.
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