Today sees the second of three starting flights get underway at the City West hotel in Dublin, Ireland for Day 1b of the Winamax Poker Open Main Event.
Yesterday 183 players were whittled down to 37, and today many more will get the chance to book their spots in Day 2.
Several players fired twice yesterday with no success, including defending champion Otto Richard, former champion and Winamax team Pro Pierre Calamusa and last year's final tablist Teunis Kooij.
Other Winamax Team Pros Gaelle Baumann and Leo Margets are expected to jump back in, as are several other Team Pros who have up until now been enjoying the festivities away from the felt!
Players will each receive 50,000 chips and play 19 levels, each 30-minutes in length. There will be twenty minute breaks after every four levels, and the third break of the day will be a one hour dinner break.
Stay tuned PokerNews for all the live updates to see how the event progresses here in the Irish capital.
Last year, Teunis Kooij finished fifth in the 2017 Winamax Poker Open Dublin Main Event, and he's back in the Irish capital this week aiming for more success.
Yesterday things didn't go his way as he fired two unsuccessful bullets, but he says that it's made better being in such an amazing environment.
"The City West is just an amazing venue and location," he told us shortly before play got underway today. "When you look around it's just amazing. I feel really nice when I come and play here; there's a nice atmosphere, nice people, and everything is well-arranged."
Winamax offers players an affordable 6-Max experience on specially designed six-handed tables. Kooij says he really likes that format.
"It's nice to have the 6-max format because it means you have opportunities to put a little bit more pressure on your opponents. You have to play from the start because you can see that some people are sometimes a little clueless about what to do with so many big blinds!
"Today I'm going to try and build up a stack for Day 2. Hopefully, I make it today. I'm confident."
Not only is the format appealing to players, but the off-the-felt activities are also just as much of a draw, and Kooij is no exception.
"I like the side things also. It's just really nice to hang around with friends and other people. The dealers are also a little bit friendlier and you can interact with them a little bit more so that's nice also.
"There isn't a tournament like this. It's a bit smaller, but the atmosphere is really nice."
First Kooij has to make Day 2, but he admits that another final table run would be his ultimate goal.
"Making another final table would be really amazing so I'm going to try my best for sure!"
Forget VIPs; at Winamax it's all about the WIPs! Just like in Marrakech at the SISMIX, several people have been invited to take part in the event this week and they include French professional video gamer Ronan 'carbonr10' Houssein, French YouTuber Pierre 'aypierre' Aymeric and French producer Julie Brochu.
We'll be keeping an eye on them as they progress through the tournament.
Photos courtesy of Caroline Darcourt
Ronan 'carbonr10' Houssein is a former professional Call of Duty player and Twitch streamerPierre 'aypierre' Aymerick has over one million YouTube subscribers
Day 1b of the Winamax Poker Open Dublin Main Event is in full swing, but no doubt there will be several players eyeing up off-the-felt activities should their day take a downward turn.
Tonight is the famous Winamax Beer Pong Open. This is not your average beer pong tournament that perhaps you played at house parties. There are tables and rules and a tournament bracket projected onto the wall. There are team names and bragging rights.
Last time PokerNews reported on a Winamax Beer Pong Open it was in Marrakech at the SISMIX event. So entwined were the Beer Pong and the Main Event that the Day 1a chip leader reached the semi-final, and the eventual winner of the Beer Pong Open went on to be the chip leader of Day 1c!
Here are some pictures from the competition earlier in the year!
From the moment you walk in the front door of the City West hotel you are bombarded with branding. But it's not enough to make your head spin. Rather, it subtly sucks you in and makes you feel part of the tournament in a way that's not often achieved by other festivals. This is all down to Winamax Head of Communications Mathieu Porri, who we sat down and spoke to.
"Five years ago we started working with an illustrator called Sattu Rodrigues," he explained. "So the first time we had this 'What happens in Dublin, stays in Dublin' imagine as a way to represent all the parties happening around the poker.
"He has a really cool cartoon way of representing people and we thought it was very cool. So the next year we made a new illustration, only this time we wanted to have him draw people. So we gave him a lot of pictures of players and he incorporated them into the branding."
"Other tournament operators have a large approach with dedicated brands and very "classic" approach to poker branding. So we need to put something new and fun forward. Our approach is more through the community and online players. All our ideas are about whether it's good for the community, is it good for players and is it fun.
"It's very big here so you have to put illustrations up to make it our own. The idea here is as much to have good times with players you know from online. If it's not fun it's not Winamax. You have to put some creativity on certain aspects of the festival to work on the image. People see poker like it's a finished discipline, so we need to put somethign new in to make them enjoy the moment and the week."
Last year the Winamax Poker Open moved to a new venue, and a new XXXXXL branding was set up with Rodrigues' illustrations at the heart of it.
So what percentage of the Winamax Poker Open is poker, and what percentage is fun?"
"In Dublin, it's always 100% poker, 100% fun," said Porri. "What other tournament do you have a leisure room with pool and darts and all sorts of little games.
"Tonight you will have 200-300 drunk people playing beer pong, and I'm sure among them there will be a mix of professional players like the Winamax Team Pros and other grinders, semi-professional players like businessmen and also a lot of qualifiers."
Porri recognises that to some pros a €500 buy-in tournament is more or less a "free-roll" compared to other tournaments they're entering.
"But each year they still come back!" he said with a smile. "That's the spirit of this tournament. Here you have pros sitting next to players who come in costumes. Maybe there's a group of five and only one or two will play the Main Event. The rest will all be here playing the turbos and the smaller side events. That's what it's all about."
It's clear therefore that this kind of tournament is not capable of being branded in a normal way. Hence the unique style of branding that adorns the walls of the City West hotel.
"It's clear that this approach when it comes to fun away from the tables means people have to enjoy the ambience at a Winamax tournament. The graphics need to totally be in line with that, so the cartoon approach to representing people shows the fun."
Which brings us to this year's illustrations, depicting the event as some kind of poker therapy retreat for all the players and Team Pros.
"The idea this year was that one week a year, you have all these French players have a little vacation or a home away from home. We thought 'What can we say about this week?'' And the idea was therapy. Old people go away for a week to a hotel to do health treatments and relax.
"That's sort of what this week is about. It's a getaway. Yes, you might make some money, but to a lot of people it's more about having fun."
If you look carefully at the hotel, the Winamax Team Pros are featured, so have a closer look!
"The problem going forward," said Porri, "Is that every year it's the same graphical style so you need to put your own spin on it each year."
Is that a problem then?
"It's difficult...but that's my job!"
Photo courtesy of Caroline Darcourt - Illustrations courtesy of Sattu Rodrigues
On the feature table, Mike D'Inca had called his opponent's all in and was ahead with against his opponent's
The flop came with no help to the all-in player. The turn gave him a gutshot and although the river gave him a set, it completed a straight for D'Inca who sent his opponent to the rail.
According to Romain Lewis, he's now into either his third or fourth year of the Winamax Poker Open and each year is as good as the next.
"You get to see a lot of the same faces and the same smiles around the place which is good. I played the High Roller a bunch of times; contributed to the prize pool a little bit too much in my opinion.
"I didn't get to cash that one so I've started in the Main Event today."
Later today sees the Winamax Beer Pong Open which is increasingly being referred to as the "Second Main Event." Lewis and fellow Winamax Team Pro Guillaume Diaz will be out for glory in that one.
"The WPO is just the sort of place where people go to mix holidays and poker," said Lewis. "It's that resort feeling; you come back to the same hotel, the same bar and the same games. You laugh, you have a drink, you play games until the early hours, and then you're going to have fun and you're going to come back!"
Another thing that makes it attractive is the 6-Max format.
"Everyone sees the 6-Max tournaments as opportunities to play more hands. We're all bunched close together around the table and that close-knit atmosphere makes everyone aggressive, not just the amateurs.
"Every pot is a three-bet pot it seems. There's a four-bet every two orbits or so, so it's pretty crazy out there. I think I have to play value if you want to go far in this tournament. But sometimes, you know, you have those cards and you're in those pots...and it just gets a little bit too aggressive!"
Romain Lewis's seat was noticeably empty (nothing to do with the Beer Pong Tournament starting imminently we assume), and at Bruno Lopes's table his opponent had checked a board to him and Lopes had moved all in for around 30,000.
His opponent called and Lopes flipped open for a flush draw. His opponent was ahead with for a pair and open-ended straight draw, rendering Lopes's ace moot. The river was the and Lopes was eliminated.
Guillaume Diaz will have to focus back on the Main Event
Arriving at the table - a custom beer pong tournament table no less - we saw that Winamax Team Pros Romain Lewis and Guillaume Diaz were in dire straits.
They were losing by a score of three to nine, meaning that their opponents had eliminated seven cups to the Team Pros' one.
Diaz and Lewis needed a comeback, and it looked like they were going to get it. A Diaz looping shot was met by the bounce shot of Lewis, which was batted away by their opponents when the pair looked assured of a double elimination.
The Winamax Beer Pong Open has an extensive list of rules, too long to list here, but the key takeaway is this. If both players get the ball in the same cup, then they eliminate three cups. And that's exactly what they did. Lewis left the table in apparent disgust as Diaz shook hands with his opponents.
"We didn't get any balls; we got totally f*cked. He made 100% of their shots. We had a little bit of a warm-up; we were good, but it didn't walk out."
It was a strange interview; you never normally get to interview poker players after they've lost, let alone after they've lost a beer pong tournament.
"Both of us are to blame. The responsibility is for both of us. To prepare for Winamax SISMIX we need to get a proper table like this and practice."
At this point Lewis rejoined the conversation.
"We were thinking about his Main Event," he said pointing to Diaz. "The Main Event is a big tournament and he's got a lot of chips. If he can't win the beer pong he has to win the Main Event.
"You can't fault anyone here [for this loss]. We just played against the Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe of beer pong. Unknown to is - there's nothing we could do about this!"
Yesterday Sonny Franco made it through to Day 2, but we spotted him chilling in the tournament room and we grabbed him for quick catch-up.
"I'm happy to be back here," he said. "I'm obviously trying to do better than last year, so it's going to be hard. But I'm going to try.
"Yesterday I made it through Day 1 with 20 big blinds, so it's going to be hard. But I'm just hanging out; it's still fun to be here. It's nice."
With a deep run under his belt, he must have good memories of the Winamax Poker Open here in Dublin
"It's a very special tournament. There's lots of drinking and lots of fun around. It's not like a professional tournament where it's all serious. But obviosuly if you can play, you play to win."
And with two days off, what has he been doing with himself?
"Relax!" he said with a smile. "Try to visit Dublin, spend time in the leisure room here and just hang out with friends and enjoy the moment."
against his opponent's 
with no help to the all-in player. The turn 
gave him a gutshot and although the 
river gave him a set, it completed a straight for D'Inca who sent his opponent to the rail.
open for a flush draw. His opponent was ahead with 
for a pair and open-ended straight draw, rendering Lopes's ace moot. The river was the 
and Lopes was eliminated.
