The poker world was expecting the 22% drop in online poker traffic reported buy pokerscout.com, and virtually everyone in the industry is in agreement that the World Series of Poker numbers will take a major hit thanks to the DOJ’s crackdown on online poker in the US. But what was still an unknown for poker players was how the Black Friday fallout would affect the European Poker Tour. And on Wednesday we got our first hint as attendance at Day 1a of the EPT San Remo Main Event saw a 25% decline over last year –438 entrants in 2011 compared to 585 entrants in 2010.
Part of the problem likely stems from many poker players still waiting to receive their funds from Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars –the latter of which just commenced withdrawals to US players on Tuesday—which means that many players are minus sizable portions of their bankrolls.
Of the 438 players that did turn-out for Day 1a of the San Remo tournament, a number of big names in the poker world were able to move on to Day 2 of the tournament on Friday, I’m sure with a nice relaxing day in San Remo on Thursday’s agenda. In all 211 of the 438 entrants survived Day 1a, with Russian Leonid Bilokur out in front of the field with 187,900 chips.
Here is a look at the chip-leaders at the end of Day 1a according to PoekrNews.com:
- Leonid Bilokur — 187,000
- Marco Adams — 160,000
- Andrew Teng — 110,000
- Ramzi Jelassi — 100,000
- Mayu Roca — 100,000
- Max Heinzelmann — 95,000
- Kimmo Kurko — 90,000
- Simeon Naydenov — 89,000
- Sergio Castelluccio — 88,000
- Martins Adeniya — 82,000
Here are some of the notable names that will also be back in action on Day 2 of the San Remo Main Event: Kevin Vanersmissen, Fabrice Soulier, Fernando Brito, Martin Hruby, JP Kelly, Nicholas Levi, David “DocSands” Sands, Pieter de Korver, Russell “rdcrsn” Carson, Ludovic Lacay, Cornel Cimpan, Casey Kastle, Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen, Vitaly Lunkin, Galen Hall, and Antione Saout.
Day 1b will get underway around 1:30PM local time –remember this is San Remo so start times are not as rigid as they might be in say Berlin—with a number of big name pros ready to take to the tables including last year’s champion Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree.
Related Posts
- Online Poker Traffic Report Post-Black Friday - April 26, 2011
- PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Eclipses Last Year’s Attendance - January 10, 2011
- PokerStars’ PCA Schedule Includes $100,000 Buy-In Tournament - October 6, 2010
Written by Steve Ruddock on April 28th, 2011