Leonid Bilokur Finishes EPT San Remo Day 1A Chip Leader

While the effects of ‘Black Friday’ are still being felt in the poker industry, many amateurs and professionals have travelled to Italy to participate in the PokerStars.net European Poker Tour San Remo. While it was a beautiful sunny day in San Remo, a total of 438 players paid the €5,300 buy-in to be tucked away in the Casino San Remo hoping to accumulate as many chips as possible on the first of two starting days.

Day 1A of the tournament saw several professional players take their seats. Those pro’s included Team PokerStars Pro’s Arnaud Mattern, Pieter de Korver, Viktor Blom, JP Kelly, Martin Hruby, Vadim Markushevski and Henrique Pinho. The winner of this seasons EPT Vienna, Michael Eiler, was also present hoping to win his second EPT title of the season, and previous EPT winners Jake Cody, Anton Wigg, Aaron Gustavson and Joao Barbosa were also on contention.

Several British players were impressing throughout the day, notably Tom MacDonald, JP Kelly and Martins Adeniya however a former British EPT winner found himself eliminated. Jake Cody found himself all-in after flopping a set of fours on a board of 4x-5x-6x but it wasn’t enough because his opponent was sitting with 3x-7x for a straight to eliminate the young pro. MacDonald and JP Kelly also had trouble of their own when bluffs went wrong and saw them lose a significant amount of chips. Chris Moorman also found himself eliminated after turning a straight, only for his opponent to hit a higher straight on the river.

By the end of the day it was 2010 EPT Berlin side event winner Leonid Bilokur who had the most chips after accumulating a stack of 187,900 chips.

Day 2 is expected to attract 500-600 more players with a whole host of stars set to buy-in to the tournament. Those stars include Team PokerStars Pro’s Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, Luca Pagano, Dario Minieri, 2010 World Champion Jonathan Duhamel, and of course the reigning champion Liv Boeree.

Top Ten Chip Leaders After Day 1A

• Leonid Bilokur – 187,900 chips
• Aleksey Zharko – 178,400 chips
• Fabrizio Cataldi – 163,900 chips
• Ivan Kudriavtcev – 163,100 chips
• Alessio Pianta – 157,500 chips
• Stephen Leonard – 147,800 chips
• Arnaldo Petino – 147,200 chips
• Kimmo Kurko – 145,500 chips
• Ramzi Jelassi – 143,400 chips
• Andras Nemeth – 142,100 chips

Last season’s PokerStars European Poker Tour San Remo stop saw Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree win the event for a staggering €1,250,000 after overcoming a field of 1,239 opponents. Play will resume today at 1:30 CET and as always we will have a full report of the days play.