March 27 2012, Marc Convey

Day 1b of the PokerStars.it European Poker Tour Campione attracted 392 players. Combined with Day 1a’s field of 178, the total entrants of the EPT Campione Main Event soared to 570, creating a prize pool of “2,764,500. A cool “640,000 of that prize pool will go to the winner. Former EPT Grand Final champion Nicolas Chouity emerged on top of the chip counts, with 165,900.

A lot of those chips came during an end-of-day tussle with Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst. She came into the press room to say, “Six-bet shoved into aces!” Selbst had jack-nine suited and was drawing dead by the turn.

Chouity won’t be able to rest on his laurels though because he’s amongst an end-of-day top 10 that looks like this:

However, the aforementioned players all trail Davide Andreoni, the Day 1a chip leader, who will come back for Day 2 with the overall lead – 175,100.

Four times as many PokerStars Team Pros entered Day 1b as they had on Day 1a. The Pros had a mostly successful day with 13 of the 16 who played moving on to Day 2. Here’s how they ended up: Arnaud Mattern (21,000), Matthias de Meulder (73,200), Eugene Katchalov (59,800), Liv Boeree (43,600), Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (90,200), Dag Palovic (7,600), Pier Paolo Fabretti (39,100), Max Martinez (31,800), Victor Ramdin (50,800) and Fatima Moreira de Melo (14,900).

Team PokerStars Pros Luca Moschitta, Dario Minieri, Salvatore Bonavena, and Lex Veldhuis all came, battled, but failed to win for their badge. Minieri’s day ended when he ran the mighty into Irene Baroni’s pocket aces. Bonavena flopped top pair, moved all in, but was flushed away by Bryn Kenney. Veldhuis’ kicker let him down and he fell to Andrea Benelli.

David Vamplew had a great day. He battled with former EPT champion Michael Eiler early on before hitting quads and never looking back en route to amassing a 100,100 stack. Chris Moorman finished with 64,400, helped by a hand where he held pocket kings that found the last remaining one in the deck to stay alive and crack an opponent’s aces.

John Eames’ success on the EPT (besides one final table appearance) has mainly been in crushing side events. His main event came to an end when he ran a set into a bigger set. Dominik Nitsche got off to a great start before he fell back toward his starting stack, and then was undone when he made a move and ran into Andrey Gulyy’s aces. He said afterward, “When people shake they have it, right? I still couldn’t find a fold.” Jeff Sarwer, Will Molson, Ash Mason, Zimnan Ziyard, Andrew Frankenberger, and Michael Tureniec were all eliminated on Day 1b as well.

Day 2 begins Wednesday at 1400 CEST (0500 PST), when the remaining 325 players will converge in the same room to play until the official PokerStars Party kicks off – on a boat on Lake Lugano.

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