Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi OiWe hate to keep banging the same drum here on the PokerStars Blog, but Barcelona has delivered another monster field and another record breaker. We’re sorry, it must be getting rather old by now.

With long lines and a lengthy alternate list when play began we speculated that the €10,000 High Roller might well break 400 runners, when re-entries were taken into account. Whilst it hasn’t quite breached that figure yet the tournament has usurped the number of players from last season.

Twelve months ago 295 players entered (98 of whom rebought) and as level five drew to a close the tournament clock ticked upwards to 394 players of whom at least 24 of which have also already fired a second bullet. Whilst the likes of Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst, Sergio Aido and Fabian Quoss will be hoping its second time lucky, Alex Trevallion has had no such trouble as he’s all but quadrupled his starting stack of 50,000. With blinds still at a low 250/500 ante 50 the Australian has a mighty 189,000.

He leads a chasing pack that includes: Francois Billard (147,000), Diogo Cardoso (135,000), Andras Nemeth (130,000) and Martin Finger (130,000). Finger who has already won the One Day €25,000 High Roller this week would complete the EPT Triple Crown should he take this down as he already has an EPT Main Event and Super High Roller title to his name.

Fatima Moreira de MeloThere are plenty of players flying the Red Spade in the field. It was hard to miss George Danzer and he’s increased his starting stack to 59,000 so far which is one big blind ahead of Fatima Moreira de Melo who has 58,500. It’s early days yet but Ike Haxton is fairing best of all with 116,000, Marc-Andre Ladeouceur is up to 80,000 Eugene Katchalov still has starting stack, best-bud ElkY is on 37,500 whilst Leo Margets has slipped to 29,000.

As for the aforementioned Selbst, her second bullet is going better than the first as she’s got around 68,000. Her initial exit from the tournament against Ben Tollerene is undoubtedly the hand of the day so far. On a 2♥ 2♣ 6♥ Q♣ 2♠ board Tollerene checked the river and Selbst bet 6,200 only for Tollerene to check-raise to 25,000 which was enough to set Selbst all-in. Selbst did call all-in and she showed Q♠ Q♥ for top full house, but Tollerene held A♦ 2♦ for quads!

It was death by quads for SelbstOf course poker is a zero sum game so whilst some have prospered in the opening hours, others are finding it tougher to get going. EPT11 Malta High Roller champion David Peters has slipped to 36,000, but he’s in good company as Chris Brammer (34,000), Stephen Chidwick (31,900), Ivan Luca (30,000), Byron Kaverman (30,000) and Max Silver (28,000) have all dropped below starting stack.

There’s plenty of time for any of those players to recover though as there’s 10 levels of play scheduled today and if they don’t, there’s always the option of that re-buy.

To get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts from EPT12 Barcelona, don’t forget to download the EPT App on both Android or IOS.

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