March 21 2011, Matthew Pitt

After a smaller than expected field of just 180 walked through the doors of the picturesque Alpine Palace Hotel in Saalbach-Hinterglemm Sunday afternoon for Day 1a of the PokerStars.net European Poker Tour Snowfest you would be forgiven for expecting another compact field for Day1b. How wrong you would be though, as a field of 302 players exchanged €3,750 for 30,000 tournament chips and the dream of becoming a EPT Champion.

While 302 players bought in, the truth is is that there were only 301 of them present for the first few hours of the day, since Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier missed his flight to Austria and turned up to the tournament six hours late. Amazingly, despite having his stack blinded off during that time, he still managed to sit down with a rather healthy stack of 25,000 chips. He managed to turn that stack into 60,000 at one point, but with his loose-aggressive style he lost them all by the time play came to an end.

There were plenty of Monsieur Grospellier’s PokerStars team-mates in the field today too including the de Meulder twins Mattias and Christophe, Dario Minieri, Sandra Naujoks and Julien Brecard, the latter was celebrating his 32nd birthday but the poker gods failed to bring him any extra luck, and he and all the above mentioned Pros were eliminated by the end of the day. A number of Team PokerStars Pros did make it through to Day 2, including the man who has cashed a record 17 times in EPT events – Luca Pagano. Max Lykov and Liv Boeree also made it though and Boeree will return to nurse a stack of 19,000, though she says she is happy with that total, considering the cards she was dealt throughout the Day 1b proceedings.

Along with the vast team of PokerStars Pros, there was a very talented field packed tightly into the tournament area including the likes of Fabian Quoss, who made the final table of the EPOT London High Roller event, John Eames who finished third at the recent EPT Copenhagen Main Event, and Anton Wigg who won EPT Copenhagen in 2010. As is usually the case when there is a pro heavy field, a so-called “Table of Doom” forms, and Monday was no different as, ironically, Table 13 was the home to a whole host of familiar faces. First EPT San Remo Champion Liv Boeree took her seat and she was sandwiched between Luca Pagano and James Sudworth. At the opposite end of the table sat EPT Berlin winner Kevin MacPhee and a few minutes into play, EPT Tallin Champion Kevin Stani sat down in seat five. As far as tough tables go, this was one of the toughest we’ve ever seen.

Throughout the day, there was not one person who looked as if they were going to become a runaway chip leader, but a couple of hours from the end, Michael Tureniec went on a mini-heater and he went from under-the-radar, to flashing brightly on it, with over 200,000 in chips. A large percentage of his stack was won in a hand with Sandro Ruegg. In the hand, Tureniec called a 12,200 bet on a board reading before seeing Ruegg bet another 16,500 when the peeled off on the river. This last bet sent the reigning EPT Copenhagen Champion deep into the tank for around two-and-a-half minutes and he finally made the call, turning over which was enough to beat the of Ruegg. Tureniec could not keep the momentum going right up to the end of the day, though he did finish with 186,800, a more than respectable total.

The man who everyone will have to catch Tuesday is Vladimir Geshkenbein, who managed to turn his 30,000 starting stack into a colossal 253,700 during the eight levels of play Monday. He burst onto the live poker scene in 2009 when he won the APPT Macau High Roller Event for $266,705 and will be looking to go deep in this event over the next four days.

Play resumes at 2:00 p.m. local time on Tuesday, when the 102 survivors from Day 1a combine with the 166 from Day 1b, all hoping to make it through to Day 3 where they will have a chance of making it into the money or even walking away with the €390,000 first-place prize for winning the PokerStars.net EPT Snowfest.

Be sure to keep it locked to the PokerNews Live Reporting Page for all the action, and as always, follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.