Stjepan Jokic would not look out of place slam-dunking basketballs in Madison Square Garden. He is a tall and of an enviable height and he finished the day with a chip stack to match.
We started the day with 208 players and 6,240,000 chips in play. 219,000 of those chips have been placed into a bag, sealed and the name Stjepan Jokic is on them. They won’t be coming out until Day 2 but in the meantime let’s give you a run down of the action here today.
It has been a day captivated by a few duels. The stares replacing the gloves that used to be slapped across peoples faces and instead of guns and bullets we have chips and cards; but they are duels all the same.
Party Poker Team Pro Dragan Galic and Marc Inizan are two tremendously experienced and loose aggressive players. They were seated directly opposite each other and had their pistols cocked, loaded and aimed at each other all day long. It was just highly irregular to pass their table and the two of them not being in a pot together. Galic eventually gained the upper hand and finished towards the end of the leader board with 156,300 chips. Inizan also made it through to day two but with a more modest 69,400.
Galic was not the only Party Poker Team Pro playing today. Bodo Sbrzesny was also in the field and at first shared a table and some action with Manuel Bevand; but it was a table move that brought the best out of Bodo Sbrzesny and the highlights were his encounters with the Spaniard Raul Olarescu. When Sbrzesny took his seat Olarescu was over-running his table. That changed when Sbrzesny arrived and had position on Olarescu. The action between the two was fast and furious but always contained a rye smile and a bit of laughter. Again it was the Party Poker Team Pro who came out on top in the end. Sbrzesny finishing with 144,700 compared to the 50,800 of Olarescu.
A lot of famous poker faces had made there way to the Montesino casino in the beautiful city of Vienna. Amongst them were Betrand “ElkY” Grospellier. Grospellier was brought to his knees by the might of [qx][2x] on a board of [ax][2x] [3x] [qx]; Grospellier was holding [ax][kx]. The delectable dish that is Leo Margets followed not long after when her pair of Jacks was beaten by [6x] [7x] on a flop containing two pair for the latter.
Towards the death, Stjepan Jokic, was moved to the same table as Galic and Inizan, but even the giant Austrian could not keep the two of them apart. In the end he didn’t need to, he had amassed so many chips before landing on that table that he seemed to simply cruise through the last two levels.
For a full commentary of day 1a live reports check out the live blog and we will see you back here tomorrow for day 1b live updates.
WPT Vienna Day 1a picture gallery
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