Finland's Feras Abid Leads the Way After Day 1 of the 2018 Kings of Tallinn
The fourth edition of the Kings of Tallinn Main Event hosted by Olympic Park Casino and Hilton Tallinn Park was a huge success with 241 entrants ponying up the €1,100 buy-in.
This represents just six players less than that of the record 247 entrants to play in last year's event. However, a new record at this point is a mere formality with many players stating their intentions to enter for the first-time or re-enter before the late registration period ends at the start of tomorrow.
Players began the today's deep-stacked action with 30,000 in chips and battled it out for seven blinds levels of 60 minutes each.
About half of today's field survived today's action with Finland's Feras Abid leading the way with 137,700 in chips. Also finishing the day in good shape was Estonia's Tonis Viik in second place with 119,000 in chips. Viik admitted he got lucky in a big hand where he the river delivered one of the cards he needed to complete a flush draw or a gut-shot straight draw on the river to haul in a big pot.
Henri Vaisanen ended the day in third place with 118,300 in chips, giving Finnish players two of the top three spots to enter Day 2.
Another Finn in Juha Helppi looked like he had a good chance to advance to the second day with the chip lead after once having more than 140,000 in chips. He is one of Europe's most successful poker players with more than $7.1 million in cashes and was easily the most accomplished poker player in today's Day 1 field. While Helppi did give some chips away during the final blind level of the day, he will enter Day 2 near the top of the pack with a healthy stack of 112,200.
Also in today's field were three Team OlyBet pros in Raigo Aasmaa, Carmen-Elena Vist and Dmitrijs Meless. All three players were busy accumulating chips throughout the day and will be in the mix on Day 2.
Day 2 of the Main Event will kick off at 12 p.m. local time tomorrow with blinds at 400/800 and an ante of 100. We will have updated chip counts for all of the players as well as starting seat assignments before the action resumes.
As was the case today, the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide complete coverage tomorrow and beyond until a winner is declared.