The PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) at Casino Barcelona continued today with its Day 1 flight of the �3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty. Over 12 Levels of play, 1,178 new entries took their seats to battle over the felt, up 502 entries from the Day 1 starting flight of the same event last year.
At the end of the night, 300 players bagged and tagged and will be returning for the Day 2 restart tomorrow afternoon. With late registration still open until the start of play tomorrow, this number is only expected to grow.
By the end of proceedings, it was Jeremie Zouari who claimed the title of chip leader having accumulated 546,000 over the eight hours of play. Zouari has found himself over 80,000 chips in front of his closet competitor Igor Picone who bagged 464,000; the only other player to accumulate more than 200 big blinds for the restart tomorrow.
| Place | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jeremie Zouari | France | 546,000 | 273 |
| 2 | Igor Picone | Germany | 464,000 | 232 |
| 3 | Alexandre Raymond | Canada | 386,500 | 193 |
| 4 | Lucas Silva Rocha | Brazil | 386,500 | 193 |
| 5 | Luigi D'Alterio | Italy | 368,000 | 184 |
| 6 | Frederic Breton | Canada | 335,500 | 168 |
| 7 | Matias Chervin | Argentina | 320,500 | 160 |
| 8 | Ryan Yu | South Korea | 302,000 | 151 |
| 9 | Fraser Bellamy | United Kingdom | 295,000 | 148 |
| 10 | Anton Yakuba | Ukraine | 275,000 | 138 |
Day 1 Action
It was Phillipe Barouk from France who caught the attention of PokerNews during today��s play as he managed to make both a Royal Flush and a Straight Flush on Level 1 and Level 8 of the tournament respectively. Despite his interludes of luck on the felt, Barouk was unable to materialise a stack for Day 2.
Notable names to, momentarily, hit the rail included John Juanda and Conor Beresford, both of whom exited to the rebuy desk multiple times between them. With late registration open throughout the entirety of the day, Juanda��s second bullet allowed him to bag a stack of 38,000. Meanwhile, Beresford fired three bullets in total but was unable to spin up a stack for Day 2.
The play will commence on August 31 at 12:30 p.m. local time. Those who progressed today or those to late register tomorrow will start proceedings on Level 13 with blinds at 1,000/2,000 with a 2,000 big blind ante.
At the start of Day 2, all players will be given a Mystery Bounty Token upon seating; if you eliminate a player you will collect their Mystery Bounty Token. Any time after 5:15 p.m. (the second break), players can take any collected tokens to the Mystery Bounty desk to draw an envelope. The Mystery Bounty prize amounts will be determined by tournament entries and remaining players and will be announced on the tournament floor tomorrow.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back tomorrow to bring you more coverage of the Europen Poker Tour Mystery Bounty here at EPT Barcelona, so stay tuned.
