Day One at the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT)

The London stop on the PokerStars EPT tour is trying to become the biggest event in the U.K. and they are on the right path. Though attendance was with-in 6 players from last year’s event, the prize pool grew by about £700,000 and this year, the poker pros and online poker qualifiers will battle among each other for a total prize pool of £2,038,400.

After day one events that where split into to halves, Nicolas Levi has the overall chip lead with just over 100,000 in chips. Nicholas is the only player over the 100,000 mark after day one but there are several players right in his heels including the 2003 WSOP champion Chris Moneymaker.

Moneymaker isn’t the only notable poker player making it to day two. Patrik Antonius (Irish Poker Open co-founder), Liam Flood, Daniel Negreanu, Marc Goodwin and Jeff Lisandro are all in good shape when they restart the event.

Liz Lieu is also still alive but with only 10,000 in chips she will have to make a good run to stay in the hunt in day 2.

Not all went well though for some of the poker professionals in attendance. Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot was sent packing close to the end of day 1 A as his pocket jacks ran into Chris Moneymakers pocket aces.

Pocket aces didn’t work as well for Finland’s Juha Helppi, as he was the first sent to the rail in day one B when he was outdrawn by pocket queens.

Some were left just shaking their heads as lady luck was just not on their side. Ram Vaswani, who won the WSOP shootout event this year for his first WSOP bracelet, was left muttering, “I was in every pot, I didn’t win any of them.”

PokerStars EPT Leader Board After Day One:

1. Nicolas Levi – £100,300

2. Daniel Mangas – £98,500

3. Antony Phillips – £94,600

4. Chris Moneymaker – £79,700

5. Ola Brandborn – £73,100

6. Fredrik Haugen – £63,800

7. Vijayan Nagarajan – £59,800

8. Joseph Mouawad – £59,700

9. Anthony Lellouche – £58,000

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