UKIPT Bristol moved serenely into the second of its two opening days today. Following Day 1A, The Gala Harbourside Casino opened its doors once more today, welcoming 315 new participants to the felt to test their luck and skills as Day 1B kicked into effect and it was the unheralded but talented Marinos Mina who finished the day in the chip lead.
The day itself saw Marinos Mina rise from the pack to take the accolades, his chip total of 138,800 putting him out in front once the dust had settled on eight levels of tough, uncompromising poker. Snapping at his proverbial heels were Emanuele Pani and UKIPT Nottingham Season 1 winner Andrew Coleridge whose 127,400 and 95,200 respectively mean they are still well-placed to mount a serious challenge for the title, given favourable conditions. Wojtek Barzantny, the UKIPT online winner, continued to show his poker prowess by powering through the day with 22,000.
A flint-hard field was made even tougher by the presence of a number of Team PokerStars Pros, including Liv Boeree, who struggled once her aces got cracked early in the day, a failed coinflip the final sad footnote to her tournament.
Vicky Coren faced her own challenges throughout, including running quads into the royal flush of James Dempsey in a cooler of epic proportions. Dempsey might have won that coup but it was Coren who demonstrated greater powers of resilience, making it through the day with 29,400, whilst Dempsey was one of the throng finding themselves on the rail come the close of play.
In other news, Christophe De Meulder barely scraped through the day but will return with 9,200, whilst Mickey Petersen succumbed before the day had run its course.
In total an impressive 550 players bought, satellited or otherwise earned their way into the mix, creating a prizepool of £373,450. This will translate into an attractive £90,400 for the eventual winner with a minimum final table prize of £6,080 and £1,000 for those players who sneak into the top 72 players. The full prize pool and payouts can be found here.
That is the final word as they say. The remaining 130 players from day 1B will be back tomorrow, where they will merge with the 109 who made it through day 1A. Revitalized and full of English breakfasts, we know there will be battles aplenty breaking out across the felt.
We hope you can join us at 12:00pm sharp as we bring the action of Day 2 to your doorsteps. See you there!
A full fat guide as to how day 1B played out can be visited by clicking here for levels 1-4 and here for levels 5-8. The official chip counts of all 239 survivors can be found here.
All photos are copyright of Mickey May. She kicked a cigarette out of a grown man's hand yesterday - watch out, she's a ninja.