Another week and another big poker event being held at the Aspers Casino in Stratford. This week it is the turn of the Boylepoker.com International Poker Open (IPO) London event and the poker tournament is already building nicely to what should be a big weekend of poker action. The Day 1A of the event took place on Wednesday night and these events are really becoming drawn-out affairs for keen poker players. Having more attempts to qualify for the major events is definitely going to be of benefit to most poker players though and you won’t find too many people moaning about the increased opportunities.
Then again, you would get some people moaning but that’ll be down to the folk who never quite managed to qualify after playing on Wednesday night! There were a grand total of 86 players taking part in the big event and with a buy-in of £200+£25 there was a reasonable price to pay. Getting close to 100 poker players on a Wednesday night is not a bad haul and you can bet the numbers will pick up as the event marches towards the weekend.
A lot of poker players go home disappointed
Of the 86 players who started playing poker, it was left to 32 players to go through and make their way to Day 2 of the event which takes place on Saturday. For some of the 54 players that failed to make it through, Wednesday night will have represented their only opportunity to make it through to the weekend but there will definitely have been some players that decided Thursday and Friday provided fresh opportunities to bounce back and have another go at making progress in the big tournament. It is not as if the organisers will mind because poker players that want to re-enter will have to pay the money again so it all helps to increase the player pool and bring money into the big event.
One player that was able to relax on Thursday and Friday was Mihal Antone. This is down to the fact that Antone finished Wednesday night as the chip leader with an impressive 99,000 chips at the end of the play. This total was 14,000 more than second ranked player Andrew Berkecz who finished up with 85,000 chips after his play on Wednesday night. In third place was Huseyin Houssein, who lead for a large part of the evening before ending up with 74,300 chips. 59,400 chips were enough for Yen Nenh to take fourth place and in fifth position was Sarah Holt who managed to bag 54,500 chips for her play on Wednesday night.
The rest of the top 10 was filled out with Stefania Toader, Keith Miller, Mats Rosen, Renier Zyl and Lee Dang in 10th position and 48,500 chips. These 10 players and 22 more are definitely back at Aspers Casino in Stratford when the IPO 2013 continues on Saturday but there will be plenty of other poker players joining them for the big Day 2 poker event.