Leonov and Efimov Dominate Day 1b; Moreira De Melo Makes Day 2
The 2019 PokerStars EPT Open Sochi Main Event has already surpassed the field size of the first-ever EPT Open on Russian soil as Day 1a and Day 1b drew a total of 672 entries so far. Day 1b of the RUB133,000 buy-in (~$2,040) consisted of 184 unique players and 20 re-entries, and 103 players bagged and tagged at the end of 10 levels.
Two players made the most of the 30-minute turbo format as Aleksandr Leonov (265,300) and Sergey Efimov (221,000) topped the counts by a mile. Vladislav Levskiy follows in third place with 147,600 and other notables such as Andrey Plotnikov (121,100), Nikolay Fal (114,200), Dmitriy Ponomarev (101,200), and Mikhail Zamyatin (88,800) claimed above-average stacks to their name for Day 2.
Fatima Moreira De Melo was the sole PokerStars ambassador to take part on Day 1b and ended up with 53,500. Down in chips early on, the former Dutch hockey international scored a late double when her ace-ten out-flopped ace-queen suited and dodged the flush draw of her opponent.
Many other notables were less fortunate and ran out of chips towards the very end such as Gerald Karlic, Roman Korenev, Arsenii Karmatckii, Vasiliy Tsapko, Mikhail Mazunin and Andrey Bondar.
They all have one more shot at running up a stack for Day 2 as the third and final starting day has kicked off a few minutes ago at 6 p.m. local time. You can follow all the updates shortly right here on PokerNews as another 10 levels of 30 minutes each await.