Thursday, 28th March 2024 12:37
Home / Uncategorized / EPT9 Berlin Day 1B: Final numbers are in…it’s 912-handed in Berlin

Counting the number of players in an EPT main event is a far more difficult business than just wandering around the tables with one of those clicking things in your hand. Players qualify or buy in online then want to switch days; some turn up a day early or a day late; some ask at the last minute to switch seats to other events; some even buy in and then don’t show up at all. It all muddies the water for those whose job it is to keep them crystal clear.

Everyone involved with the organisation of these tournaments bends over backwards to ensure pretty much any demand (within reason) is catered for, but it means that it can take them much longer than you would think to tell us how many players have actually taken their seats for the week and how much money is in the pot.

Earlier today, we got our first “official” notification that the field for Day 1B of EPT Berlin was 553 players. That was impossibly convenient because it brought our total for the entire tournament to an even 900, adding today’s batch to yesterday’s 347.

tournament_room_ept9_berlin_day1b.jpg

It’s full, but how full?

The problem was that a few minutes later, we got our second official notification, and that told us that the first notification had been downgraded to “provisional”. This notification came with the suggestion that we may actually be looking at a Day 1B field of 564, which just happened to be another impossibly convenient number. That would take us to a total 911 players, which was the exact number of those in the Berlin Cup.

Another few minutes went by, which then became an hour, and a lot of multicoloured beads were slid along a lot of wires on a lot of abacuses (abaci?). Eventually, we were informed once and for all that we had a number from Day 1B. It was 565, and that means the €5,300 EPT Berlin main event will go in the books as having 912 players over its two day one flights.

That’s an impossibly convenient number because it means the main event got more even than the €1,100 Berlin Cup warm up. That’s exceptional.

The next step is for the full details of the prize pool to be announced, but a whole new team of bean counters, with their own set of svelte abaci will be employed to determine that. It will certainly be with us before the beginning of play tomorrow (and maybe even within the next few hours). But the chances are that our winner could be getting close to a €900,000 payday. Yes please.

Players have now returned from their dinner break to play the final two levels of the day. If I were you, I’d start watching some of this very soon on EPT Live, because the table they have there is a beast. It features the British duo of Sam Grafton and George Clyde-Smith, both of whom have more than 120,000 chips. It also has ElkY. It also has Jason Lavallee. And it also has the defending champion Davidi Kitai.

That’s some table.

Of course, also stick with us for information about that prize pool. We’ll share it with you as soon as we know it.

Don’t forget the way to follow our main event coverage. There’s hand-by-hand stuff, including chip counts, in the panel at the top of the main EPT Berlin page. There will be feature pieces below that panel, including updates from the side events. EPT Live is now live. And everything to do with the European Poker Tour is on the European Poker Tour site.

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