Good morning everybody and welcome back to Dublin, where it’s time to catch up and then to look ahead.
Before a brief review of what’s been going on, here’s the current state of affairs: Day 2 of the €1,100 PokerStars Festival Main Event will get started at noon, and if you are playing, or have friends who are, you can look at the seat draw and chip counts as a matter of urgency.
We got to this stage at the end of two starting flights played at a normal pace through Thursday and Friday, followed by a turbo re-entry edition that got cracking last night.
That was a roaring success, with 148 players returning for a second attempt and 76 booking their spot in Day 2. Qualifiers included Kevin Killeen, Matthias De Meulder, Steven Watts, Chris Dowling and Jason Tompkins. Unfortunately, the second bullet of Jake Cody, Ludovic Geilich, Will Kassouf, Richard Ashby, Cathan Shine and Orpen Kisacikoglu all went the way of their first (ie, wayward).
What it means is that 199 players will come back to the Regency Hotel today to play a scheduled 10 60-minute levels. There’s a 15-minute break after every other level, and a 60-minute dinner break at the end of Level 18.
That means we’re looking at 10 hours of play, another one hour 45 minutes in breaks and a midnight finish, give or take.
By that point, we’ll have final confirmation of the payouts schedule, ie, how the €700,000 prize pool is going to break down. All in all there were 544 entries (that’s 396 players plus 148 re-entries) and so the bubble should burst early evening.
There are a few familiar names at the top of the counts, where Deborah Worley-Roberts leads Emmett Mullin, and the likes of Dan Jones, Dave Penley and Chris Moneymaker are not far behind.
Today is likely to distill everything that’s best about this game: big money, high drama (and not a little heartbreak too). Stick around for feature pieces at PokerStars Blog and blow-by-blow action via Poker News.
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