Twitch TV partypokerTV is Live Now - Watch live on Twitch

Final Chipcounts.

As promised, here they are:

Pasi Jaakko Heinanen – 193800
Shannon Shorr – 191800
Pawel Brzeski – 173100
Sebastien Garrasi – 143900
Oleksii Khoroshenin – 129800
Yngve Hella Steen – 109200
Roman Korenev – 95900
Marco Andre Lang – 93700
Michael Watson – 88400
Julian Herold – 84100
Markus Onni Antero Ristola – 80400
Michael Patrick Gagliano – 80000
Paul A Volpe – 80000
Samuel Lindberg – 79300
Eddie Tasbas – 78600
Aaron Michael Gustavson – 74400
Lukáš Dydek – 73500
Rinat Bogdanov – 71000
Candido Augusto Goncalves – 70700
Pavel Kellner – 70300
Andrey Shatilov – 68800
Konstantin Maslak – 68000
Oldřich Trávníček – 66900
Anaras Alekberovas – 63000
Benjamin James Martin – 61600
Benjamin Bernard Pollak – 61500
Jean Francois Bouchard – 60200
Nikolay Tsanev – 58600
Alexander Meidinger – 58400
Trevor Charles Whiteway – 57500
Benjamin Charles Hamnett – 55100
Marc Robert Daubach – 53100
Adam Roy Adler – 53000
Zhan Gurevskyi – 43800
Juha Ilmari Helppi – 43300
Petr Šubík – 41100
Aurelien Francois Leroy – 40900
Dmitry Buchin – 39900
Martin Gaudig – 36900
Vojtěch Růžička – 36400
Aleksandr Knizhnyak – 36200
Bohumil Valenta – 34900
Steven Van Zadelhoff – 30000
Max Joseph Silver – 28300
Tood Bruce Terry – 27300
Ognjen Šekularac – 26800
Avi Cohen – 23600
Bodo Sbrzensny – 21800
Atanas Kavrakov – 20500
Jacob Edward Toole – 16300
Jorge Ufano Pardo – 15700
Michael Garris Aron – 15000
Riccardo Scalzo – 12600
Petr Jelínek – 12500

Wrap Up Day 1a.

That’s it from Prague. At least for today.
Day 1a of the WPT Prague Main Event came to a hold. We saw 115 players start into the tournament, only half of them survived the day.

According to the tournament clock 54 players made it through to day 2. We’ll add complete chipcounts as soon as they’re in.

Tomorrow we’ll be back for day 1b, which will see most of the PartyPoker and bwin qualifiers at the tables. Kickoff is 1pm CET.

Unfortunately we lost PartyPoker qualifier Ben Carpenter in the penultimate hand. With something like 15k and pocket sevens he run into kings and soon after out of the tournament area.

New Chipleader.

His name is Pasi Jaakko Heinanen and he’s from Finland … in case you didn’t notice that by reading his name. While former chipleader Shannon Shorr gave up some chips, Pasi climbed right up to the top spot.

By our guesstimate it’s close to 200k.

No Woman Survives Day 1a.

Here we were, crossing our fingers … and then it was all for nothing. The only female player on day 1a didn’t manage to get through to day 2.

Lee Davy caught Ana Marquez and managed to get some words out of her. Best if you listen to it yourself.

Can You See the Finish Line?

We’re almost there. 70 players return to the tables after having their last 15-minutes break of the day. How many of them will make it through this ninth and last level of day 1a?

With the average stack being just under 50k, the blinds of 400/800 ante 100 are starting to hurt.

So What About PartyPoker Players?

There’s not many of them out there. Actually, not many of them started on day 1a. Still in the field is PartyPoker Team Pro Bodo Sbrzesny. With 20k in front of him he has some work ahead of him to get back up to average (48k).

The other one is Ben Carpenter. He’s been to live events qualifying through PartyPoker before and sure has more experience than the average online qualifier. He’s sitting comfortable behind an average stack.

Digging through our archieve we found this video. Shot back in 2010, he showed the PartyPoker crew how he prepares for a big live tournament.

Shannon Shorr Might be our Chipleader.

We can’t be absolutely sure, but his stack seems a little higher than the other big stacks in the Main Event. You may count yourself, it roughly adds up to 150k.

For those of you who actually want to count: blue chips are 5k, red 1k, yellow 500, light blue 100 and green 25.

The average Stack is at 43k with blinds 300/600 ante 75.

Shannon Shorr has been a poker regular since way back making countless final tables in the biggest events. His live poker winnings add up to almost $5 million. Only thing he’s missing is one of those prestigious titles. He came close in WSOP, WPT and EPT events … could this be the one?

Cards Are Back in the Air.

Nothing has changed during the break. No unexpected missing players, no more late registers. So still 85 out of 115 players left on day 1a.

During the break we met up with some players at the bwin.party lounge, where they’re enjoying drinks and fingerfood. Most of them will start the WPT Prague tomorrow on day 1b.

Want to find out how it looks inside?
Sorry, only way to do so is to qualify yourself. Right now you can do so for the most amazing tournament of the year (at least according to yours truly). The Aussie Millions.

Dinnerbreak.

Six levels are played and the remaining 85 players are off to the buffet. With the end of level 6 the late registration is closed as well. Final number according to the tournament clock: 115.

WSOP Champion Duhamel Out.

The most famous player in todays field busted right before the dinner break. Jonathan Duhamel bet on every street and went for a river shove on a [Tx][9x][Kx][Qx] board. His opponent Kropacek apparently counted on Duhamel’s aggressiveness, as his [Ax][9x] was ahead of [Kx][Qx] all the time.

There She Is!

Remember us complaining about the lack of female players? And our assessment on the late registration? Of course there’s this one player who tries to proof us wrong on everything we write.

As the official player list isn’t updated yet, we can’t be 100% sure. But it has to be Spanish pro Ana Marquez.

Feeling Bored?

Neighbours are boring? Or even worse, annoying. Card dead for the last three hours? What are you going to do?

Sean Jazayeri told us in an interview (video to follow), he doesn’t like to listen to music at table. You loose your edge as your concentration will drop. I kinda doubt that the pastime of his choice causes less distraction.

And his highscore sucks!

Any Last Minute Entries?

While the late registration for day 1a is still open, I think that’s pretty much it. Very unlikely that we are going to see a lot more players today.

So the not final (but close to final) number is 112. 95 of them are still left, here’s the list of the busted players so far:

Jacek Artur Ladny
Jean Philippe Piquette
Erik Ingvar Olofsson
David Bransfield Cubeta
Maxim Panyak
Sondre Svanevik
Petr Targa
Nicolas Alexandre Levi
Mark Dalimore
Manos Foudoulakis
Igor Cioroi
Dorin Rauta
Rocco Palumbo
Brian Lemke
Ryan Nelson Franklin
Patrice Mauroy
Marcellus Mattheus Van der Wolf

If you read through the list you might notice that the two WSOP bracelet owners Rocco Palumbo and Brian Lemke are out of the game.

Who’s the Chipleader?

Tough question. Also kinda pointless. We’re only four levels into day 1a. Right now the players are on a break and will return with blinds being 150/300 and Ante 25. So even if you’re still sitting in front of your starting stack, you’re 100BB deep.

Being a poker blog I guess we have to give you some kind of answer though. From what it looks like, there’s only few players who doubled their starting stack. It’s probably Bulat Bikmetov and Avi Cohen battleing it out for that top spot. They each have around 70-80k in their stacks.

Feeling hungry?

Grinding for hours, remaining patient, ignoring annoying neighbours, fighting tiredness …
A poker tournament isn’t just about playing the cards you get. It’s hours and hours of concentration and can be excruciating. So how are players coping with that? The dinner break (and complimentary buffet) is still a couple of hours away.

While some claim they play better on an empty stomach, most players order something to eat sooner or later. Here’s a selection of what the Kings Casino at the Corinthia Hotel has to offer:

There’s also some classic English sandwiches on there. If you read this and are playing the Main Event: stay away from the one with ham!

What is your favourite food at the poker table?

The biggest star in the room.

Did you ever win a WSOP Main Event? No? Too bad.
Well if you do, we guarantee to write about it on the PartyPoker Blog and to follow your career from there on.

As we do with Jonathan Duhamel. The Canadian won the 2010 WSOP Main Event for almost $9 Million. So I guess he’s considering the WPT Prague a low buy in tournament. That might be the reason why he only sat down now.

Level 3 after the first break.

3:40 pm.
Cigarettes and toilet runs it’s what those tournament breaks are all about. Back at the table, the blinds are 100/200, 98 out of 103 players are still in.

During the break we grabbed a couple of players for a short interview by the likes of Brian Lemke, Bodo Sbrzesny, Steven Van Zadelhoff and Keven Stammen. It will take some time to edit the whole thing.

Another thing you can look forward to: during the final table at the WPT Prague there will be a $500 freeroll on PartyPoker for all our readers. Stay tuned to the blog as we’re going to publish the password right here.

Here’s the first bust.

Halfway through level 2 we have the first empty seat. It belongs … well, belonged … to bwin qualifier Manos Foudoulakis. He’s already been here last year, yet again he leaves without cashing.

At the 2012 WSOP Main Event he managed to run pretty good by finishing 91st for $62,000. Here’s a video of his bust there.

Dropping Names.

Galavanting around the tournament area, we noticed some more familiar faces. There’s actually three WSOP bracelet winners playing. One of them is Italian pro Rocco Palumbo, the others are Keven Stammen and Brian Lemke from the US.

There’s some WPT Champions as well. Michael Watson, Sean Farshid Jazayeri, Benjamin Hamnett and – as mentioned earlier – Juha Helppi.

Michael Watson actually holds multiple WSOP bracelets himself, as he won two of them at the World Series Of Poker Europe.


Michael Watson

No Female Players.

It’s not like there are masses of women at the tables at every event. But not a single one? I expect them to turn up tomorrow or Wednesday.

At least that gave us a cheap reason to sneak in a dealer picture.

Bust and Freeroll Back In

Didn’t make it through level 1? Or busted right before day 1a ended? Don’t worry, the WPT gives you another chance. For free that is!

Everyone who doesn’t make it through day 1a is entitled to play a freeroll tomorrow at 2 pm. One out of 11 players in that freeroll will get a ticket to reenter the WPT Main Event. Not bad, considering those tickets are worth €3,300.

Shuffle Up and Deal.

1:30 pm.
Here we go. Blinds are 50/100 for Level 1. As for now the room isn’t filled up, but late registration is still open.

On first glance we found Juha Helppi and PartyPoker Pro Bodo Sbrzesny. Always fun to be around Bodo, who’s usually lightening up the mood. And he knows how and where to look when there are cameras around.

Slight delay in Prague.

If you’ve been at poker events, you won’t be surprised that there’s a slight delay. Happens more or less at every event.

New starting time: 1:30 pm.

So what’s the plan of the day?

We’re going to play nine levels, 60 minutes each.

At the end of level 2 and 4 there’ll be a 15 minute break, at 7:30 pm we go into dinner break … if everything goes according to play. All in all, day 1a should be done around midnight.


At least the poker clock is ready to go

 

Mmmm … Goodies

While we’re waiting for this party to start, have a look at the WPT Prague PartyPoker Goodie Bag.

Inside the backbag you have pretty much everything you need for a poker game … except some friends to play with. Wearing the WPT Prague imprinted hoodie those shouldn’t be too hard to find though.

Want to get one of those yourself? Easiest way is to qualify for a live event. How about the Aussie Millions?

10 A.M. Let’s get this party started

So here we are in Prague.
Another stop on the European schedule of the World Poker Tour. Join us this whole week for the live coverage of the WPT Prague 2012.

What Happened Last Year?

2011 saw a new record amount of players at an European WPT Main Event. Well, maybe not players. As they were allowed to buy in on multiple starting days the actual number is slightly lower.
Anyway, 568 players/buy-inners joined us in Prague and were battling it out for the place in the sun. Actually, there’s not much sun to be found in a wintery Prague, but €450,000 for the first place finisher aren’t bad either.

Will we be able to step up another notch?

A new record? Maybe 600 players? 700? 2,000?
We’ll see. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One way or the other we can look forward to a great week full of poker and fascinating stories. And of course some less fascinating bad beat stories. Hate them or not, they’re part of the whole poker thing.

Numbers Game

  • Three starting days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday).
  • A buy in of €3,300.
  • 30,000 chips starting stack.
  • Levels of 60 minutes (later on even 90 minutes).
  • Final table (televised as usual) will be on Sunday 9th.

Keep your fingers on the keyboard, you’ll need that F5 key. Kick off is at 1pm.

media section

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments and follow us on Twitter for more poker greatness.

Share.

Comments are closed.