11.42pm: Boehler leads Day 1b and the field at the PokerStars Marbella Festival
Sell-out would be an understatement. The second day 1 flight at this joint UKIPT/ESPT stop was brimming with players hoping to jump into the action. The tournament staff at Casino Marbella went above and beyond to accommodate a total of 411 entrants, blowing away the advertised cap of 350.
Coming out ahead was Canadian Nick Boehler, who outdid day 1A's chip leader Andrey Shubin. The grizzly man at table 10 seat 7 never moved today while chips, 231,700 to be exact, eddied his way. Many players here took the hand before a break off, scurrying away for the restroom or the bar. But today we watched Nick deferring respite in favour of triple barreling.
Both Team PokerStars Pro Leo Margets and her Team Online counterpart Grzegorz "DaWarsaw" Mikielewicz fought valiantly, the latter increasing his chip stack tenfold after early struggles. But it was not to be and both are harshly condemned to a weekend full of Sophie's choices: beach or hammock, rum or tequila, and so forth.
Even more big names showed up today with luminaries like Surinder Sunar due to return tomorrow with 33,500 after steady play. PokerStars' own Nick Wealthall couldn't be so fortunate, having made the distinctly poor choice of playing all day only to be eliminated before the stroke of midnight. An early favourite, Martins Adeniya lost three quarters of his stack in a brutal last level. He'll start day 2 short with 36,000.
Full day 1B final chip counts can be found here and combined day 1A and 1B chip counts can be found here.
The final prize pool breakdown can be found here.
In George Clooney's Syrianna, Marbella plays host to the scene of a gruesome electrocution - a young man leaping into a luxurious estate's hazardous swimming pool. Today featured plenty of electricity, but none fatal, unless you count the 284 tournament lives lost. Tune in tomorrow for more international intrigue as we chronicle the hopes of the combined survivors.
Be there or be here, we'll be bringing you all the latest, starting at 12:00pm local. -- GC
11.42pm: They think it's all over...
...and they are quite right.
The tournament has ground to a halt and we have an outright chip leader, with an improbably gargantuan stack.
We'll be posting up the final wrap up of day 1B shortly with all the juicy morsels of information we know you crave (full chip counts to follow later) but for now thanks for following! -- RS
11.27pm: Four hands to go...
With just 13 minutes to go till the end of the level, the tournament clock has been paused and we are playing four more furious hands.
There are several stacks in the region of 100-200k which could mount a challenge to finish the day as chip leader.
Let's see how these final moments play out... -- RS
11.22pm: Wealthall bows out with the snowmen
A chilly finish ends Nick Wealthall's participation in this tournament. With a dwindling chip stack, pocket eights seemed like a good enough hand to take a stand with. Unfortunately he ran into pocket tens.
"I don't really have any interesting stories to report either," he lamented having struggled to build a stack all day.
11.11pm: It's not the size of the dog in the fight...
...it's the size of his chip stack. And here are some of the big stacks with the final stretch in sight.
Lorenzo Dedaj - 150,000
Victor Patino Gonzalez - 95,000
Keyan Jalili - 90,000
Michael Graydon - 80,000
Ludovic Geilich - 80,000
Charles Chattha -- 65,000 -- RS
11:00pm: Clicking buttons
Martins Adeniya does not like giving up on pots. This led to an outbreak of the technically named "button-clicking." It takes two to b-click the old adage goes, and Adeniya's dance partner was Alejandro Sanchez, who put in a cold four-bet to 11,200, on the button. The bet was clicked back in his direction, Adeniya making it 16,200.
Sanchez decided to take a flop, which came out [Ks] [Ts] [9d]. The size of the continuation bet in this five-bet pot was 7,800 of course, which got raised up to 17,300. Keep track of all that action? Good. Because that was it. Martins mucked quickly and his opponent removed the sunglasses to ask his opponent if he had "air." -- GC
LEVEL UP: BLINDS 600-1200 ante 100
10.47pm: DaWarsaw will watch basketball tomorrow
Level 9 was the end to Team Online's Grzegorz Mikielewicz, admittedly "crazy day."
Down to 17,000, he went all-in under the gun with ace-king. One of the blinds had jacks, and it was a standard race, the flop an unhelpful ten-high.
"Today, it was amazing. The first ninety minutes I could have been up to 50,000, instead I was down to 3,000. All the time I had a really strong hand that ran into a better hand," recounts Mikielewicz.
He made a very strong comeback, but as with all tournaments, the blinds went up, and people get short.
Now DaWarsaw has no excuse to miss game four of the NBA finals at 3am tomorrow, though he "would rather not watch," he remains bullish on Lebron and the gang.
We'll be on the lookout for Grzegorz to return Sunday, with a tan, for the six-max side event.
10.35pm: Roll call of UK players
As this tournament is a joint UKIPT venture, it seems apt to disseminate some information about how some of the better-known British players are performing.
As we saw earlier, Wai Kwan Yuen has amassed an impressive stack. Also faring well to fair are:-
Martins Adeniya -- 85k
James Mitchell -- 45k
Chaz Chattha -- 34k
Kevin Williams -- 26k
Surinder Sunar -- 24k
Nick Wealthall -- 19k
A quick note on Wealthall. His stack has vacillated around the 15-25k mark all day but he doesn't want anyone to think he's not playing pots. Earlier on we reported he had been boasting of "sexy bluffs." His latest vainglorious outpourings have seen him lauding some of the "impressive folds" he's been making.
We love Nick and can't wait to hear what aspects of poker he's been mastering next, whilst being able to simultaneously slide down the leaderboard. -- RS
10.16pm: Yuen sends Zweifel crashing out
The UK's Wai Kwan Yuen may be one of the last female players left gunning for the title but she is refusing to be intimidated by the ranks of men surrounding her.
A huge tangle with Peter Zweifel moments ago saw her kings best Zweifel's pocket nines, leaving him on the rail and Wai shooting into title contention with a mountain of chips - approximately 55k. -- RS
10:08pm: The fearless Miguel Abellan
A particularly stoic player is in the field today, one used to staring down ornery, muscle-bound bovines. That's right; Miguel Abellan is a bull-fighter. In fact, he's such a real-deal Spanish bull-fighter that two years ago he had his faced gored by one of his conquests. What would be more appropriate than watching him play ten hands around this, slightly less dangerous, ring?
MP - Abellan opens the pot for a standard raise of 1,800 and is three-bet to 4,800 by the hijack. The big blind comes along cold and Abellan calls. The flop is [9c] [8c] [5h] and action checks to the three-better, who fires 12,600. The big blind folds leaving the Spaniard to check-raise to 30,800. His opponent was not interested in giving him the stare down (good luck with that) and elects to fold. Not a bad start!
UTG+2 - Folds.
UTG+1 - sharing a word with a railing Jose Maria Gutierrez, Abellan makes it back in time to fold.
UTG - folds.
Bonus UTG - a breaking table means this one is ten handed now. The new player slides in and takes the big blind, giving Abellan another opportunity to fold.
BB, SB, BTN, CO, HJ - you guessed it, a lot of folding went down. In fact, that's all Abellan did in this stretch. But he looked strong and virile while doing it. There is no rush, no enraged nose-ringed farm animals about, after the pot that started this orbit Abellan is closing in on the 100,000 club. -- GC
9.55pm: We have reached level nine - the penultimate level of the day.
The blinds are big and the battles to steal them will only intensify from here on out. Expect a few wars to break out at the felt. -- RS
PokerStars Blog reporting team at PokerStars Marbella Festival brought to you by UKIPT and ESPT: Rod Stirzaker and Gareth Chantler. Photos by Eric Vogel.