Lucia Martinez Leads Day 1a of 888Live Barcelona Main Event
After a mammoth 12 levels of play on Day 1a, and with 34 players remaining, Lucia Martinez has the chip lead with 268,000 chips in the 888Live Barcelona €1,100 Main Event.
Day 1a welcomed 104 entries (including re-entries) across the day, with the early pace-setter the entertaining Canadian player Kelly Kellner. He won some big pots early to run up a stack of over 100,000 chips at one point, but just like in yesterday's High Roller, he couldn't hang onto them and this time in unfortunate fashion. He was ahead of Alessandro Predaroli all-in pre-flop but couldn't hold on. Instead of 100,000, Kellner suddenly had half that stack, which all went to Lucia Martinez when her kicker was enough to topple Kellner's when both players hit top pair in the next hand.
Elsewhere, others were running into trouble. Sally Stephens couldn't win a flip with pocket jacks when she saw an ace on turn and river end her first bullet, but she later re-entered. Hacharan Dogra Dogra ran short then ran it up, but couldn't survive the final cut-throat levels. Others were more successful, with Hristian Panchev (222,900) Alejandro Vazquez Gomez (184,400), Gabriel Podovei (180,700) and Vitaly Tevis (179,700) all harbouring hopes of taking over the chip lead when Day commences.
Ema Zajmovic made just 600 chips profit on her starting stack, bagging up 30,600, but she survived when needing to hit with two cards to come, so can count herself lucky rather than the opposite to have gone through on her first bullet.
Day 1b will start at 6pm local time later today, with another 12 levels to see if more entries can get closer to breaking through the incredible €500,000 guarantee.