The buzz around Aspers Casino Westfield Stratford City was electric on Thursday as the inaugural partypoker World Poker Tour (WPT) National UK London Main Event opened its doors to the poker adoring public.
By the time tournament director John Scanlon called time on Flight 1’s proceedings, after eight 30-minute levels, there were 73 of the 188 entries still with chips in front of them, each progressing to Saturday’s Day 2. The best placed of these surviving players was Jodie Wallace, a local hospital worker, who bagged up a tournament leading stack of 118,200.
Wallace won her seat in a live £25 satellite at Aspers Westfield and has continued her run good by multiplying her 20,000 starting stack by almost six times!
Hot on Wallace’s heels are four players who each bagged and tagged more than 100,000 as the curtain came down on Flight 1. Tim Timotheou (117,100), Arjanif Kouday (107,400), Kjetil Hove (104,000), and Catalin Cesuc (102,500) being that quartet. Of that awesome foursome, Timotheou is the better-known player thanks in part to his impressive live tournament winnings of more than $170,000.
partypoker WPT National UK London End-of-Flight 1 Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Jodie Wallace | 118,200 |
| 2nd | Tim Timotheou | 117,100 |
| 3rd | Arjanif Kouday | 107,400 |
| 4th | Kjetil Hove | 104,000 |
| 5th | Catalin Cesuc | 102,500 |
| 6th | James Finigan | 96,400 |
| 7th | Daniel Prevost | 89,000 |
| 8th | Nicholas Ali | 82,600 |
| 9th | Charles Chatta | 78,600 |
| 10th | Keith Ellis | 72,600 |
As you can see from the table of chip counts above, local hero Charles Chattha is among the chip leaders; his 78,600 chips place him in ninth place as things stand right now. Chattha has some amazing results in the live poker arena – he has almost $1 million in winnings — with his largest cash topping the scales at €111,129, which was his reward for finishing second to Dave Shallow in the 2012 WPT Dublin Main Event. Chattha is almost certain to buy into Flight 2 and Flight 3 in an attempt to build more large stacks to accumulate on Day 2.
Chattha wasn’t the only notable poker pro in the field on Thursday, not by a long shot. WPT National Marbella final member Scott O’Reilly, the legendary Ian “The Razor” Frazer, Sin Melin, Martins Adeniya and James Akenhead all competed on the opening flight and have plans to buy into the second and third flights on Friday.
As mentioned, there are two starting flights taking place on Friday; (1) Flight 2 commences at 2 p.m and (2) Flight 3 starts at 8 p.m. Both flights will play eight 30-minute levels. Tune into the partypoker blog on Saturday to see if Wallace remains the tournament’s chip leader or if someone can eclipse her impressive stack.
The all new partypoker Sunday tournament schedule
The all new partypoker has introduced a new Sunday tournament schedule. The key changes are the addition of an action-packed fun $10K Super Bounty and a wide range of new low buy-in tournaments featuring the best of the old but also new speed, rebuy, add-on and PLO tournaments – a great Sunday mix if you want to win top prizes and have fun playing tournament poker.
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