Friday, 29th March 2024 14:55
Home / Uncategorized / EPT12 Dublin: Gilles Bernies leads to end Main Event Day 1A

Love is in the air. There are flowers everywhere. It can only be Valentine’s Day, so what did 147 romantics decide to do? Come and play Day 1A of the EPT Dublin Main Event of course!

It’s the first EPT stop in Dublin for 10 years, and plenty of big names have made the trip. While the UKIPT and High Roller tournaments have kept players busy so far, it seems many couldn’t wait to get stuck into the €5,300 Main Event.

After 8 levels of play, the man who had the biggest stack in front of him was PokerStars Qualifier Gilles Bernies from Germany, who’ll take a whopping 189,600 charging into Day 2 on Tuesday.

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Gilles Bernies – your Day 1A chip leader
The other biggest stacks going through to Day 2 belong to Mike McDonald (162,400), Ian Hunter (139,400), Artem Litvinov (138,900), Adrian Mateos (128,800), Anthony Zinno (124,800), Fabrice Soullier (123,400) and Kamran Aliyeu (114,200).

79 players in total had chips to bag and tag at the end of the day, and now that they’re sealed and the players have headed to the bar, here’s a little run down of what went down on Day 1A.


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How romantic

Like we said, love was in the air today and two players who knew all about it were Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier and esteemed pro Natasha Barbour (who happens to be Mercier’s girlfriend). Both were in the field today and both survived, with Mercier bagging 83,200 and Barbour 37,400 when it was all said and done.

 

Meanwhile, it was a lovely day for Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano, who had a steady rise to his 78,000 end-of-play stack.

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Smooth sailing for Luca Pagano
Charlie Carrel hopped straight into this event after placing 3rd in the €25K High Roller for
€234,100. No rest for the wicked! He’ll back in action on Tuesday with 49,900.

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High Roller to Main Event for Carrel
And Fabrice Soulier had a swingy day – down to 20,000 then up to 125,000, then back down to 69,000 before finally finishing with 123,400.

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Swingy for Soullier
One player who ended the day in stunning form was Mike McDonald. He won an enormous pot from a player who had led the chip counts for a lot of the day, Artem Litvinov from Russia, and shot up to 162,400 – which he’d the day with. Litvinov wasn’t happy – “Why, Michael?” he protested, jokingly. “I spend all day accumulating my chips while you were sleeping!”

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McDonald wins big pot
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Litvinov moans…
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…but he’s only kidding really
Sam Greenwood, Davidi Kitai, Pierre Neuville, Kevin MacPhee, Jeffrey Rossiter, Barny Boatman, Nick Petrangelo, Christoph Vogelsang, Ben Heath, Keith Johnson, and Darryll Fish are also through to Day 2.

Of course, we had to have some casualties. Max Silver busted to Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano when both flopped two-pair; Mohsin Charania was knocked-out just a few hands after sitting down when his flopped set of fives lost to Artem Litvinov’s rivered set of kings; and Mike ‘SirWatts’ Watson couldn’t make it two Main Event titles in a row when he was felted in the last level of the day.

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Pagano busts Silver
Other notables who couldn’t survive the day included Dario Sammartino, Ryan Riess, Rocco Palumbo and Joao Vieira.

You can catch up on all of today’s action by checking the Day 1A Live Updates here.

And while you’re at it, you can check out the full Day 1A chip counts here.

We’ll be back with live updates for Day 1B at 12:00pm tomorrow, so make sure you can come back and check out what’s sure to be a much larger field.

Go get some rest and we’ll see you tomorrow!


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Take a look at the official website of the EPT, with tournament schedule, news, results and accommodation details for the rest of the season.

Also all the schedule information is on the EPT App, which is available on both Android or IOS.

PokerStars Blog reporting team on the EPT12 Dublin Main Event: Stephen Bartley, Nick Wright, Jack Stanton and Martin Harris. Photography by Neil Stoddart. Follow the PokerStars Blog on Twitter: @PokerStarsBlog

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