Jose Carlos Garcia Tops Day 1a of Inaugural 888poker LIVE Madrid Main Event

Christian Zetzsche

Level 11 : 1,000/2,000, 2,000 ante

The first 888poker LIVE Main Event in Madrid has attracted a field of 180 entries for the first of four starting days and around 100 players bagged up their chips in the early morning hours at the stunning Casino Gran Via Madrid. While most of the participants hailed from Spanish-speaking countries, it was a player from Poland that topped the counts at the end of 11 levels of 50 minutes each.

Jose Carlos Garcia may indeed sound very Spanish but the former online and live poker prodigy is in fact from Poland. He had not been spotted on the live circuit for some time and just played his first four-figure buy-in in three years. Garcia still sits in 9th place on the all-time money list of Poland with more than $1.1 million and steam-rolled through the day to claim 505,200 to his name.

Others that came close to the bragging rights for Day 1a include his countryman Rafal Nikiel (330,100), Francois Robert (320,400), Marjan Mitrovski (305,900), and Yimin Yang (302,600). Mitrovski had to crack aces with kings in the second level to avoid a re-entry, then had the better and of a set-over-set battle with Marcin Jaworski to become the first player above half a million. After running extremely hot in the first half of the day but slipped towards the end, still bagging up an above-average stack.

The rise to the top of the leaderboard of Garcia kicked off in the fourth level when he four-bet ace-jack suited and flopped two pair, his opponent called down all the way to the river with ace-king and hit the rail. From there on, it was a grind and Garcia never left the top five stacks anymore.

But not just locals and online qualifiers battled back and forth at the tables, team 888poker was also well represented after bowing out before the money in the �2,200 High Roller. Among the ambassadors, Martin Jacobson made the most of it after his late entry and bagged up 194,000, narrowly ahead of Vivian Saliba (190,700), Chris Moorman (170,400), and Ana Marquez (167,800). Dominik Nitsche also joined the mix and missed out on a trademark stack for his sponsor by two chips as he advanced with 78,800.

Other notables that have already secured a bag for Day 2 include Fernando Pons (247,800), Ori Hasson (239,600), Francis Foord-Brown (228,000), Carl-Fredrik Tingvall (205,300), Jorge Ufano (121,300), and popular vlogger Brad Owen (28,000). All those that busted or are unhappy with their stack thus far can participate in as many of the three remaining starting days as the best stack will go forward to Day 2.

Familiar faces that are very likely expected back at the tables are Nikolay Ponomarev, Tom-Aksel Bedell, Andrey Demidov, Paul Lozano, and Antonio Smeraglia.

103 Entries in �2,200 High Roller, Nine Remain

Day 1b will kick off at 5 p.m. local time with the same structure as the first heat. One hour prior than that, the final table of the �2,200 High Roller recommences. Only nine players out of 103 entries remain and bagged up for the night once the final table was reached close to 4 a.m. local time, resulting in the need for an additional unscheduled third day of the event.

The current average with 18 minutes left in level 23 at blinds of 15,000/30,000 and a big blind ante is nearly 40 big blinds and 888poker ambassador Sofia Lovgren is among the finalists. Ignacio Molina, who headed into the second day as one of the big stacks, has retained his top spot and will be the man to beat. The current guaranteed payout is �5,700 and the winner will take home �52,000 for the efforts.

�2,200 High Roller Final Table Line-Up

Seat	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	Ignacio Molina	Spain	1,895,000	63
2	Dmytro Yevseienko	Ukraine	1,450,000	48
3	Leonardo Mancuso	Italy	1,000,000	33
4	Arie Zilberman	Israel	695,000	23
5	Sofia Lovgren	Sweden	1,690,000	56
6	Valeriano Toledano	Spain	905,000	30
7	Daniel Tafur	Spain	1,470,000	49
8	Jose Manuel Planells	Spain	130,000	4
9	Andrey Golubev	Kazakhstan	1,025,000	34