Yann Dion Leads the ￡10,300 High Roller Event at EPT London
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The ￡10,300 High Roller kicked off today in the glorious surroundings of the Grand Connaught Rooms here in the centre of London as the creme de la creme of the poker scene looked to take the title won last year by Jason Lavallee.
After ten one-hour levels, it is Yann Dion who'll go into Day 2 as the chip leader after finishing with 363,300. Dion lost his first bullet very early on but made a resolute comeback to finish with the chip lead in a commanding position. Former WSOPE Main Event winner Adrian Mateos had a great start and was over 200,000 early on, peaking at 375,000, but the Spaniard had a bad last couple of levels and eventually finished up with 276,000 – which is still good enough for 2nd place at this point. In third is former EPT winner David Vamplew. Vamplew busted Talal Shakerchi in the last hand of the day and finished with 236,400, just ahead of Andren Chen (230,300) in fourth.
With the tournament allowing a single entry the players were very divided on whether or not stump up ￡10,300 a second time. Some, like PokerStars sponsored player Dominik Panka only had a single buy-in. Elsewhere, Team PokerStars Pro Eugene Katchalov fired two bullets but came up short. Former EPT Barcelona winner Tom Middleton, Andrey Andreev, Vladimir Troyanovskiy and Igor Kurganov all had similar stories with nothing working out.
Jason Mercier lost his first bullet to the chip leader Dion but stuck around with his second one, finishing the day with 42,400. Fellow Team Pro Liv Boeree jumped into the High Roller straight after a 27th place finish in the Main Event but despite a good start, she was eliminated after the dinner break. Johnny Lodden (109,300), Bertrand Grospellier (78,500) and Victoria Coren Mitchell (64,000) all made it through, as did PokerStars Team Online's Isaac Haxton (109,300). However, Mickey Petersen was knocked out in one of the very last hands of the day when his 
was pipped by Bryn Kenney's 
on a 
board.
Nosebleeders (in that they play nose-bleed stakes, not that they have nasal-based problems) Viktor Blom and Daniel Colman both turned up to play for the last couple of levels but neither could get anything going and both were eliminated within an hour, though both immediately rebought and are still in for Day 2. Elsewhere Patrick Leonard managed to get kings, aces and queens three hands in a row but lost both the first and third and was never able to get anything going after that, while former EPT Champion Nicolas Chouity and High Roller specialist Philipp Gruissem saw plenty of sparring throughout the day, attempting to one-up each other multiple times.
With entry still available until 11.45am tomorrow, there won't be a table draw or the completed prizepool until the tournament has restarted but even if no-one else enters, the tournament will still have had an increase on last year's 157 buy-ins.
The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be back again tomorrow as the ￡10,300 High Roller event continues with Day 2 playing through the money and to the final table! With the restart at 12pm, we'll see you then!