The first starting day of the €720+80 Main Event of the inaugural Mega Poker Series at the Casino Barcelona attracted a field of 125 entries. After nine 60-minute levels, that field was cut pretty much exactly into half as only 62 of the participants bagged up chips. The full chip counts will become available some time tomorrow and the second starting day of the Deep Stack Event is scheduled to kick off at 16:00, the vast majority of online and live qualifiers will then join in.
After a very dominating last part of the day, Sviatoslav Shturyn bagged up impressive 551,000 chips to claim the overnight lead. The player from Ukraine only has four Hendon Mob cashes to his name, each of them from the end of 2014 in Recurring Events here in Barcelona. Hot on his heels is Jorge Galino Lopez with 474,900 while other notables with big stacks include Alvar Margets (341,100), World Series of Poker bracelet winner Adrian Apmann (297,500), Russian EPT regular Vladimir Troyanovskiy (249,200) as well as the local heroes Angel Funes (242,100) and Pedro Lamarca (229,200).
According to Julian Herold, the huge stack of Shturyn came off a spectacular multi-way pot on a queen-high flop with five players. The Ukrainian bet almost the pot and called two big all ins with a king-high flush draw to improve against a gutshot straight draw and top two pair. After the hand, Shturyn explained that he made this risky call because he would still have left average stack in case of a loss.
Further familiar faces and MPS regulars through to Day 2 are Ka Kwan Lau (167,300), Poker Royale boss Peter Hajszan (166,400), Dieter Aebi (138,200), Leo Margets (114,600), Daniel Burkart (68,200) and aforementioned Herold (66,100). Two recent MPS champions fired two bullets but didn’t make it to the end of level nine: 2015 Vienna winner Andelo Bozic and 2014 Varna winner Nikolay Nikolaev.
The €50 Rebuy Satellite attracted a field of 126 runners with 19 tickets being awarded, among others Melanie Hausmann and Roland Gerga won their seat for less. Tune back in tomorrow to find out who is making an appearance at the Casino Barcelona. All players that busted Day 1a are allowed to re-enter Day 1b and a bigger field than today is expected.
