The second stop of season three saw the tour touch down in Croatia for the third season in a row. However, unlike the first two seasons when the action happened in the capital Zagreb, the destination for this tournament was Dubrovnik some 600 killometres to the south at the southern tip of Croatia.
It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, but today 103 players were more concerned with what was happening indoors in the bowels of the Rixos Libertas hotel than soaking up any of the culture and heritage that this city of 42,641 has to offer.
A chip stack anywhere close to the population of the city would have been a fair days work given that each player began with 20,000. However, to be chip leader you’d need far more than that. About 151,500 say. That’s the stack of overnight chip leader Daniel Ebersold. The 47-year-old German hails from Dusseldorf, has been playing poker recreationally for about five years and runs a company that builds houses for a living. He constructed most of his tower of chips today when he flopped a full house with pocket threes on an 8-3-3- flop and found an opponent who really liked his nut flush draw. A turned ace meant Ebersold had a sweat but it missed and Ebersold found himself with a six figure stack.
With 36 players advancing to Day 2 the average stack is currently 57,200, other players who enjoyed a stellar day and finished as members of the six figure club included: Chadiroglou Triantafyllos (138,300), Chandru Alt (127,100), Kasparas Klezys (113,000) and Georges Yazbeck (108,200). The latter was chip leader for much of the day and had five times the average at one point. He’s got two side event victories on the EPT to his name and is a danger.
Whilst four members of Team PokerStars Pro will play tomorrow as they wanted to play the finale of SCOOP on PokerStars, ironically one member of PokerStars Team Online was in the field today. Dale Philip had an up and down day before ultimately busting 30 minutes before the end of the day when he ran A-7 into pocket kings.
Last night Full Tilt Poker – who have qualified a few players to this Eureka event – announced a partnership that will see three players become Full Tilt Ambassadors for the Eureka Poker Tour. One of that triumvirate -Robert Cezarescu – was in the field today. He never got anything going, his stack peaked at about 26,000 but he made it through the day with 14,800. With blinds starting at 600 – 1,200 ante 100 on Day 2 he’ll need to get an early double up to be back in it.
Before then of course we have Day 1B to negotiate, Johnny Lodden, Dag Palovic and the De Meulder twins will all be flying the Red Spade whilst Hana Soljan and Andras Nemeth will play their first tournament as Full Tilt Ambassadors.
Action gets underway tomorrow at noon local time. You can find overnight chip counts here. To see all of today’s feature posts click here, until tomorrow goodnight from Dubrovnik.
All photos are copyright of Ivan Dabac.
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