October 05 2012, Donnie Peters

Day 1a of the 2012 PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event came to a close on Friday with the first flight running through eight 75-minute levels of play. It was a long day on the felt, but one that was filled with plenty of action. Erion Islamay was front and center for much of the chip exchanging. He finished with 162,300 in chips and has assumed the position of early chip leader.

The first starting flight peaked at 320 players, which meant for quite the crowded tournament space at Casino Sanremo. Scattered in amongst the tables were plenty of top pros including those representing the host, PokerStars. Jonathan Duhamel and Marcin Horecki were two of the Team PokerStars Pros in action on Day 1a, but both of them failed to advance.

Duhamel fell to Walid Bou-Habib after losing a flip for his tournament life in the last level of the night. Duhamel was all in preflop with and up against Bou-Habib’s . The flop, turn and river of kept Bou-Habib’s sevens in the lead, and Duhamel was eliminated.

Not only was the end of the night cruel to Duhamel, but also Scott Seiver. His elimination was a bit more brutal than Duhamel’s as Seiver got his money in on the board with versus his opponent’s . All Seiver needed to do was dodge an eight or a queen in order to stay alive, but the smacked on the river and that was it.

Other notables eliminated throughout Day 1a were Shannon Shorr, Dominik Nitsche, Ilan Boujenah, Arnaud Mattern, Joao Barbosa, Mohsin Charania and Anton Wigg.

On the other side of the coin, Michael Ferrell (146,600), Matt Salsberg (135,200), Mustapha Kanit (120,600), David Peters (111,400) and Lorenzo Sabato (109,500) were a few of the notables to bag up bunches of chips. They’ll be back for Day 2 on Sunday along with Team PokerStars Pros Victor Ramdin, Jude Ainsworth, Ana Marquez and Jason Mercier.

Day 1b will commence at 1400 CET (0800 ET) and PokerNews will be right back on the floor providing all the live updates. Be sure to check back then as the second, and final, starting flight gets down to action.

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