Michael Rodrigues open-jammed for the 35,000 he had behind from an early position. One opponent after the other folded except for Kalidou Sow in the big blind, who checked his cards and then made the call after some five seconds.
Michael Rodrigues:
Kalidou Sow:
The flop left Rodrigues in dire shape and the turn ended his tournament. Sow then further improved to the nut flush with the river to score the knockout in style.
Ruslan Rishko opened to 8,500 from the cutoff and Martin Jacobson then moved all-in for 86,500 on the button. Massou Cohen seemed interested out of the big blind and inquired about an exact count, but ended up folding.
Rishko mulled it over for a couple of seconds and called to find himself ahead in the following showdown.
Martin Jacobson:
Ruslan Rishko:
The board let the kicker play and that spelled the end for Jacobson.
"I would have hit with six-seven, but I was afraid of you ... he kept going all-in," Cohen told Rishko in French in table chat while the latter was busy stacking up the chips.
A rather classic flip saw the chips of Jamie Howells and Iacopo Brandi go into the middle with the former being the at-risk player for around 150,000.
Jamie Howells:
Iacopo Brandi:
The flop seemingly locked up the double for Howells with middle set. However, the table erupted in groans when the turn and river improved Brandi to the superior full house.
David Von Schnehen and Ido Aboudi have been eliminated very close to the money bubble as the field has been reduced to just 140 contenders. Aboudi took a flip with a short stack and hi was up against the of Emil Bise.
The flop left Aboudi on the ropes and he found no miracle escape on the turn or river.
Victor Caballero was eliminated and moments later, the dealers were instructed to stop after their current hand is completed. What followed was a dramatic bubble as three seperate all ins occurred across the room, each playing out hand for hand as players crowded round.
Ankit Ahuja was all in against Mehdi Chaoui, the former the at-risk player and Chaoui also with most of his chips in the middle.
Ankit Ahuja:
Mehdi Chaoui:
The board ran out and Chaoui's kings held up. Ahuja was eliminated right on the bubble, but so was Kyung Sik Jung when his for a set of sevens on the board was no good. Julien Rouxel had rivered a wheel with the .
The third all-in showdown brought a double up for Vlada Stojanovic, who got it in preflop for 106,000 against Wim Verhaegen.
Vlada Stojanovic:
Wim Verhaegen:
The runout was a sweat but Stojanovic dodged the additional straight draw to survive.
With two eliminations on the stone-cold money bubble,Ahuja and Jung actually chopped the min cash of €3,300 to walk away with €1,675 each.
The 2023 PokerStars European Poker Tour Paris stop at the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile continues to produce solid attendance numbers and the latest event to shine was the France Poker Series (FPS) Paris €2,200 High Roller. A total of 910 entries emerged to generate a prize pool of €1,747,200 and two players already earned a tiny portion of the cash prizes after a dramatic conclusion to Day 1.
With approximately 15% making the money, the top 135 finishers were supposed to advance but three all-in showdowns at separate tables resulted in two eliminations. Ankit Ahuja and Kyung Sik Jung came up second-best to split the min-cash of €3,350, ultimately coming up short of a Day 2 berth.
Only one player turned the starting stack of 30,000 chips into a seven-figure stack and Manuel Labous topped the leaderboard with 1,106,000, followed by Luis Machado (702,000), Julien Rouxel (573,000), Alexandru Papazian (569,000), and Daewoong Song (563,000). Rouxel was responsible for the elimination of Jung to become one of the biggest stacks in the room.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 1
Position
Player
Country
Chip Count
Big Blinds
1
Manuel Labous
France
1,106,000
184
2
Luis Machado
Portugal
702,000
117
3
Julien Rouxel
France
573,000
96
4
Alexandru Papazian
Romania
569,000
95
5
Daewoong Song
South Korea
563,000
94
6
Toivo Rinne
Finland
506,000
84
7
Quentin Roussey
France
469,000
78
8
Darko Svesko
Serbia
468,000
78
9
Jon Kyte
Norway
451,000
75
10
Silviu Baltateanu
Romania
424,000
71
Among the notables to advance with an above-average stack are Anton Suarez, Philippe Souki, Iacopo Brandi, Mauricio Ferreira Pais, Symeon Alexandridis, Vlada Stojanovic, and Emil Bise.
The only PokerStars ambassador advance to lock a portion of the seven-figure prize pool is Lex Veldhuis, who claimed 131,000 to his name. Ramon Colillas, Benjamin Spragg, Parker Talbot, and PokerStars Live at the Hippodrome Pro Chris Da Silva were among the hundreds of casualties throughout more than 15 hours of play including breaks.
Many other big names of the international poker scene came up short of reaching the money including EPT Main Event and WSOP bracelet winners such as Simon Brandstrom, Frederik Brink, Jack Sinclair, Dominik Panka, Remi Castaignon, Michael Wang, Benny Glaser, Arnaud Enselme, Sung Joo Hyun, Harry Lodge, and Jason Wheeler were all among the casualties.
The WSOP Main Event winner Martin Jacobson recovered from a short stack with a triple up only to then bow out with ace-ten suited against the ace-queen of Ruslan Rishko. Jun Obara departed from the very same table as well and was not able yet to carry on the momentum from his 2022 EPT Prague Main Event final table run.
Only a few spots away from the money bubble, former PokerStars ambassador Kalidou Sow failed to improve with king-five against the pocket sixes of Aleksandr Shevliakov. That set up a frantic few minutes in which five further eliminations concluded the late night poker action.
All remaining 134 survivors will return to their seats at noon local time with at least €3,350 guaranteed for their efforts. Only 2:23 minutes are left in Level 17 at blinds of 3,000/6,000 and a big blind ante of 6,000 before the blinds increase right away. The tournament is scheduled to play down to a winner, and another marathon session can be expected.
As usual, the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide as many key hands as possible en route to crowning a winner.