January 08 2012, Rich Ryan

Day 1b of the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event is in the books and after nine hours of play, 342 entrants survived with Alex Venovski (193,000) leading the way. The second flight of the PCA Main Event attracted 654 entrants, bringing the total field for the event to 1,072, and creating a total prize pool of $10,398,400. Players who finish 160th or higher, are guaranteed a minimum of $15,000. Final tabling will earn players at least $101,000 and the player who runs white hot and wins the 2012 PCA Main Event will pocket a cool $2 million.

Venovski, a U.K. native, jumped out to a lead of 180,000 before dinner break and never looked back. After adding a few small pots during the last three levels of the day, Venovski bagged 193,000, making him the Day 1b chip leader. Ironically, Venovski will start Day 2 at Table 19, Seat 3. There were a handful of other players who crossed the century mark Sunday, including Chino Rheem (182,900), Jonathan Jaffe (182,000), Phil D’Auteuil (170,800), and Luca Pagano (136,300).

Rheem played a very bizarre pot to end the day. After a series of preflop raises against Tyler Kenney, all of the chips were in the middle and the two were battling for 120,000 chips. Kenney tabled two kings, and Chino said, “aces,” but flipped over . Rheem, who apparently misread his hand, was very perplexed, but an ace on the river saved him, and eliminated Kenney from play.

Team PokerStars Pro Lex Veldhuis flew out of the gate, doubling in the first half hour of the day. The Dutch pro flopped a set of sevens on a king high board, and was all-in on the turn against a player with top pair-top kicker. After a meaningless river, Veldhuis had doubled to 60,000. He peaked at around 90,000 during the middle of the day, but cooled off and finished the day with just 40,000.

Veldhuis may have started off hot, but no one ran hotter than fellow Team Pro Arnaud Mattern. In a ten-minute span during Level 3, Mattern was dealt aces twice and rocketed his stack to over 150,000 chips. After treading water for the next six levels, Mattern bagged up 139,300 chips, and is among the chip leaders.

Team PokerStars Pro was well represented on Day 1b, but unfortunately, a number of them were eliminated, including 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Pius Heinz, Martin Staszko, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Rousso, Eugene Katchalov, and Nacho Barbero. Other notables who failed to survive the day include, Olivier Busquet, Peter Jetten, Amit Makhija, Dan Shak, and Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy.

Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, who won the Super High Roller and over $1.25 million Saturday night, late registered and made a $10,000 last-longer bet with Harry “UgotaBanana” Kaczka. Kaczka won the bet without much of a sweat –- Blom busted in Level 5 when he lost a race with against an opponent’s .

Both Day 1 starting flights combine on Monday for Day 2. The action kicks off at 1200 EST (1700 GMT), and PokerNews will be on the floor providing all the live updates.

Following us on Twitter is the best way to keep up with the rest of the news from the tournament circuit and beyond.[/I]

Follow Rich Ryan on Twitter – @RichTRyan

January 07 2012, Donnie Peters

The first day of the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event is in the books. The day wasn’t too long, lasting just nine levels and ending before midnight in The Bahamas. It was an exciting one, though. For one, the field grew to 418 players on Day 1a. That’s a very good number considering all that has been affected from Black Friday and put the hopes of hitting around 1,200 extremely likely. Second, we saw the emergence of a big chip leader by the name of Alexey Repik.

Repik climbed all the way from the starting stack of 30,000 in chips to finish on 220,100. He played fairly aggressively for most of the day and used a rather unorthodox style as to what most players are doing these days. Instead of smaller raises preflop or smaller bet sizes compared to the pot, Repik was often raising well over three times the big blind and betting near full pot, if not a little more, during the day. Whatever he did worked though and he’ll be a very tough man to catch for the Day 1b competitors.

Along with Repik, some of the other players who bagged up bunches included Richard Bruning with 193,100, Salvatore Bianco with 192,400, Faraz Jaka with 129,500 and Adam Levy with 115,000.

Levy got himself off to a great start. He worked his way up near 60,000 early on, but then ran pocket kings into pocket aces and was crushed all the way back to 11,000. Despite the misfortune Levy fought back and was able to find a few doubles to get himself back in the game. The double that gave him a six-figure stack came in the last level of the night when Levy was all in preflop for 56,000 with the against the of Jamie Rosen. An ace on the turn gave Levy what he needed to win the hand and sent his stack soaring.

Also building some nice towers on the first day were Team PokerStars Pros Victor Ramdin, Christian De Leon, Jude Ainsworth and Pat Pezzin. Fellow Team Pros Angel Guillen and Leo Fernandez have also advanced to Day 2.

Some of the notables who were eliminated on the day included Tristan Wade, Mohsin Charania, Brandon Cantu, Chris Moorman and Shaun Deeb. Team PokerStars players to fall included Johnny Lodden, Chris Moneymaker and Chad Brown. At the end of play, the board read that just over 200 players remained.

Day 1b kicks off at 1200 EST (1700 GMT) on Sunday and the field will be much, much larger. Some of the pros slated to play include last year’s champion Galen Hall, Team PokerStars Pros Jason Mercier, Vanessa Selbst and Daniel Negreanu, Dan Shak, Matt Waxman, Eugene Katchalov and Jen Harman. PokerNews will be here to provide all the updates from the floor and you should be, too.

Following us on Twitter is the best way to keep up with the rest of the news from the tournament circuit and beyond.[/I]

Follow Donnie Peters on Twitter – @Donnie_Peters