The Day 1 Chip Lead of the €1,100 NLHE Freezeout Goes to Babaev
After twelve levels of play, Day 1 of the €1,100 NLHE Freezeout has come to an end with 42 players, out of 198 in total, bagging up at the end of the day. The 198 entries in total created a total prize pool of €192,060 and the winner will walk away with €42,590. Claiming the chip lead in the first event of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour is Zakhar Babaev from Israel with 242,500 in chips.
He collected most of those chips when he rivered a full house and eliminated Aladin Reskallah in a hand where Julien Martini folded his straight in the end in a big pot. Babaev finished in second place in this year’s EPT Sochi’s Main Event for $258,896. Martini also bagged big tonight with 165,000 and is familiar with a second-place finish in a PokerStars event as he lost his heads-up match against Platinum Pass Winner Ramon Colillas during the PokerStars Players Championship at the beginning of the year.
Second in the chip counts is Canada’s Jeffrey Colpitts with 222,500, followed by Paul Testud who bagged 205,000. Closing out the top five are Olivier Ferrero (192,000) and another Platinum Pass winner, Natalie Teh with 188,000. Other notable players who found a bag to tag at the end of the day include the Pupillo brothers Nick and James Pupillo who bagged 155,500 and 100,500.
Unfortunately, not everyone was lucky enough to make it through. PokerStars Ambassador Kalidou Sow busted in the final hand of the night when he shoved his five-deuce off-suit in the small blind when Paul Testud had limped in from the cutoff with ace-queen suited. No help came on the board and Sow was sent packing without a bag. The only other PokerStars Ambassador to participate today was Celina Lin but she also failed to find a bag at the end of the night. This was also the case for players like Romain Lewis, June Jenkins, Michael Wang, Paul Tedeschi, Jack Sinclair, Erwann Pecheux, Randy Lew, Alexandre Reard, Pierre Calamusa, Ami Barer, Antoine Saout, Joey Weissman, Timur Margolin, Sonny Franco, and Jean-René Fontaine.
Day 2 will start at 12:30 PM on Friday, April 26 with Level 13 which features a small blind of 1,000, big blind of 2,500 and a big blind ante of 2,500. Levels will continue to be 40 minutes each with a 20-minute break after every three levels. Another 75-minute dinner break is scheduled after the ninth level of play on Day 2. With 42 players remaining, the bubble is expected to burst early in the day as only 27 players will be in the money for at least €1,920.
So, who will make it into the money? Make sure to return for Day 2 to see who will cash and who will walk away as the winner at the end of the day as the PokerNews live reporting team will bring you all the action from the EPT Monte Carlo!