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The music kept on skipping yesterday, as records were constantly broken on Day 1 of the €50,000 Super High Roller. A staggering 93 entries were generated from 81 unique players and 12 reentries, shattering last year's total of 77. After the first eight one-hour levels of play, 66 remained with one of UK's finest, Stephen Chidwick, leading the charge with over 1 million in chips from the 250,000-chip starting stack.
While familiar faces like Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, and Scott Seiver were missing, as well as last year's champion Olivier Busquet and runner-up Daniel Colman, a lot of players that never played a €50,000 event before showed up. For example, there was Ben "Ben86" Tollerene, Luuk "pokerkluka" Gieles, Philippe "takechip" D'Auteuil, and Scott "Aggro Santos" Margereson in the field, and all of them made it through to Day 2.
Registration will remain open till start of play today, which will be at 12:30 p.m. local time, so new players might sign up and old ones might reenter. After Day 1 finished yesterday, there was a "reverse freeroll" held that gave players the chance to win their €50,000 buy-in back if they were still in, or qualify for another bullet if they weren't. A total of five seats were handed out in that one, though we're unsure who the lucky players were at this time.
The plan for today is to play 10 levels or down to a final table of eight, whichever comes first. Buying in now gives you a fresh stack of 250,000, and that's good for just over 41 big blinds with the first level of play at 3,000/6,000 with a 1,000 ante.
Here's the structure for today:
| Level | Small Blind | Big Blind | Ante |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 3,000 | 6,000 | 1,000 |
| 10 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 1,000 |
| -- | Break | 20 minutes | -- |
| 11 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 1,000 |
| 12 | 6,000 | 12,000 | 2,000 |
| -- | Break | 20 minutes | -- |
| 13 | 8,000 | 16,000 | 2,000 |
| 14 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 3,000 |
| -- | Break | 75 minutes | -- |
| 15 | 12,000 | 24,000 | 3,000 |
| 16 | 15,000 | 30,000 | 4,000 |
| -- | Break | 20 minutes | -- |
| 17 | 20,000 | 40,000 | 5,000 |
| 18 | 25,000 | 50,000 | 5,000 |
The table draw will be released as soon as registration closes, as to not give newcomers the advantage of knowing what table they might end up, and when it is available we'll post it. The prize pool will also be confirmed at that time.
While you wait, check out Sarah Herring's interview with Fedor Holz:
PokerNews.com will be on site from start to finish, reporting on the first flop till the last river, so be sure to stay glued to these pages.
