EPT London Champ Ian Hamilton Among Big Stacks After Day 1 in €3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty
Day 1 of the €3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty at 2022 PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague has wrapped up after 12 levels of play and saw EPT London Main Event champion Ian Hamilton bagging a stack of 216,500 to put him among the chip leaders as he looks to make another deep EPT run.
Hamilton, a young British grinder who took down the EPT London Main Event in October for a career-best ￡664,400, will return on Day 2 to compete against the 232 players who bagged on Day 1, including chip leader Iliodoros Kamatakis of Greece (329,000), Lars Garp of Sweden (268,500) and Fiodor Martino of Italy (228,000).
€3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty Day 1 Top Ten Chip Counts
| NAME | COUNTRY | CHIP COUNT | BIG BLINDS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Iliodoros Kamatakis | Greece | 329,000 | 219 |
| 2 | Lars Garp | Sweden | 268,500 | 179 |
| 3 | Fiodor Martino | Italy | 228,000 | 152 |
| 4 | Mats Ullereng | Norway | 220,000 | 147 |
| 5 | Ian Hamilton | United Kingdom | 216,500 | 144 |
| 6 | Bartolomeo Tato | Italy | 215,000 | 143 |
| 7 | Oleksii Ievchenko | Ukraine | 204,500 | 136 |
| 8 | Edvin Muhovic | Germany | 204,000 | 136 |
| 9 | Nozomu Shimizu | Japan | 182,000 | 121 |
| 10 | Rachid El Yaacoubi | France | 180,000 | 120 |
Poker Champs Find Bags
The Mystery Bounty event attracted 676 runners for a prize pool of €1,166,880, plus a €676,000 bounty prize pool, and those numbers will surely grow as late registration remains open until the start of play on Day 2.
There was no shortage of poker royalty in the €3,000-buy-in event, including World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champions Koray Aldemir and Hossein Ensan, that latter of whom is also an EPT champion as he took down the 2015 EPT Prague Main Event for €754,510. Both German poker champions found bags and will return for play on Day 2.
Other notables who survived the 12 levels of play on Day 1 include Adrian Mateos, Alexander Norden, Anton Wigg, Leo Margets, Andras Nemeth and Leonard Maue.
Some of the big names who weren't fortunate enough to make it to bagging time include Team PokerStars Pros Benjamin Spragg and Alejandro Lococo, EPT London Women's Event champion Jessica Pilkington, Emil Bise and Ghassan Bitar, who took a tough beat when his kings were cracked by the ace-ten of Hamilton.
We will see if any of those big names jump back into the action as late registration will remain open until the start of play on Day 2, which will kick off at 1 p.m. local time on Level 13 with blinds of 1,000/1,500/1,500.
Players will be given a Mystery Bounty Token at the start of Day 2 and can pull a mystery bounty for every player they eliminate. Bounties can be but are not limited to €100,000, €50,000, €30,000, €15,000, €10,000, €5,000, €1,000 and €500.
That wraps up the PokerNews live reporting team's coverage of Day 1 of €3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty, but the team will be back tomorrow to report on the Day 2 action.