Welcome to Day 1b of the EPT12 Prague Main Event
Hello and welcome back to PokerNews' coverage of the Season 12 European Poker Tour Prague Main Event, the final €5,300 buy-in EPT Main Event of 2015.
The sun is shining in Prague, but for the next 12 hours, those entering the Main Event don't care about how beautiful the Czech capital looks because all that matters is that they have chips needing bagging at the end of eight 75-minute levels.
Day 1a, played on Thursday, attracted a field of 254 players, and 144 of those progressed to Saturday's Day 2. If you're playing today and want to become the overall chip leader then you need to end the night with more than 190,600 chips, the total that Belarus' Anton Astapau accumulated during the opening flight.
Those surviving the antics of Day 1b will join the likes of Rainer Kempe (157,400), Adrian Mateos (150,200), Charlie Carrel (120,500), Anton Wigg (90,000), Andrew Chen (74,400), Mike McDonald (54,400), Thomas Muehloecker (42,500), and Byron Kaverman (41,000) on Day 2.
The field size on the final starting flight is almost always by far the largest, and that means we are set for a bumper crowd here today. While it is unlikely that Season 11's attendance of 1,107 is going to be met, we expect more than double the number of Day 1a entries, which makes for a great turnout and a huge first place prize.
Our coverage begins at 12:00 CET and continues until the players bag up their chips at around midnight. Until play is underway, why not check out this video shot at the Players Party a couple of nights ago: