When you’re just a single person swimming in a great sea of (mostly) French poker players, discovering a chip leader is going to be incredibly difficult, especially when the field had increased by more than 40% on last year’s Day 1A and there are still more than 200 players at the end of the day. However, today was the exception.
Jonathan Koskas, fresh from his elimination of Guillaume Darcourt, did not attempt to consolidate his lead. Instead he chose to go after the opposition for the entirety of the last level, bullying opponents relentlessly, and ending the day with a massive lead.
When the clock stopped, the chip average was just over the 50,000-chip mark.
Koskas has 321,600.
That’s over six times more than average.
Over. Six. Times.
Suffice to say, it was almost anticlimactic looking for the chasing pack (and to call them “the chasing pack” would be unfair as they’re not even in the same country at this point). Fabrice Somers looked to be in second place with a “usually-very-good-but-not-today” 159,000 while Samy Boutaleb has 155,000. Sajjad Sahbaei, who shared a table with Koskas earlier, ended the day with 132,300.
Team PokerStars Pro Online Ronan Monfort was the sole PokerStars representative today, having mentioned his preference for Day 1A over 1B. The Frenchman ended the day with 111,100, which he was incredibly satisfied with.
Some of the other better-known players did not fare quite as well, Former PCA champion Dimitar Danchev bused out, as did Max Pescatori. Former EPT finalist Simeon Naydenov ended the day with 32,000 after being unable to capitalise on a good start, while Paul Berende (28,400) joked at the end that he wished he’d just bought in at the start of Day 2.
Tomorrow will likely see another record-breaking day with 629 players needed to beat last year’s field of 1,095. Among those expected to play are Team PokerStars Pro Julian Brecard, Team PokerStars Pro Online Gabriel Nassif, and former EPT winner David Vamplew.
Day 1B will begin at 12pm CET on Thursday with ten 45-minute levels scheduled once more. Make sure you check in back here for more poker action as the EPT Deauville festival continues. In the meantime, why not check out some of the news here at the France Poker Series or over at the Aussie Millions?
A full list of the chip counts from Day 1A will be on the EPT app as soon as they are delivered to us by the EPT staff. You can download the app for Android or IOS. Not only will the app give you the chip counts, but it’ll also supply the seat draws and payouts throughout the festival.
A list of the Day 1A survivors are here
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