If Day 1A was the amuse-bouche, Day 1B was definitely a much anticipated starter as 260 poker players hungry for a UKIPT title rocked up to the Genting Club casino in Edinburgh for 12 levels of spicy action. Between them, the two no shows and the 115 players who entered this tournament on Day 1A they created a juicy prize pool of £255,983. The powers that be ran the numbers through the Centrally Automated Stars Hub (C.A.S.H Machine) and it was decreed that min-cash in this event will be worth £1,255, that the loser of the final hand on Sunday will collect £31,490 and the winner of this event will take home £49,660, a trophy and don't forget about the novelty cheque. You can see the entire payout breakdown here. 
As the saying goes, you can't win a tournament on Day 1, but whilst that's unequivocally true when a tournament is four days long, you can undeniably build a great platform for a deep run during the opening stanza. No one enhanced their chances of being here at the business end of the tournament today better than David Gomez. He ended the day with a bag-busting 262,700, which is slightly less than Day 1A's chip leader Kevin Whelan, who amassed 272,000. The Spaniard cracked aces with kings early on and never looked back as he built and built throughout the day. The likes of Denis Rosenov Marinov (218,400), Javier Rodriguez (208,600) and Dariusz Marcinkowski (175,000) will also sleep soundly tonight, as they all put in a decent shift at the tables and were handsomely rewarded for it. 
There was just one representative of Team PokerStars in the field today and it was Mr UKIPT himself as Jake Cody flew the flag with pride. With 10 cashes in UKIPT/UKIPT Series Main Events he's second only to Thomas Ward in that chart (Ward also played today). Despite that impressive record it's fair to say that Cody has enjoyed a number of frustrating opening days on this tour in recent memory where he's found himself constantly grinding a shortstack. Today though was not one of those days.
Ready to sign up for PokerStars? Click here to get an account.
He quickly grew his starting stack of 25,000 to 30,000 and padded it further until he lost a 100,000 chip pot. "I got it in with the nut flush draw against top pair and a flush draw on a [Js][8s][6s] flop and missed," he told the PokerStars Blog. The triple crown winner later won two flips to recover to an end of day 62,600 and chasing a 11th Main Event cash. The aforementioned Ward, who has 12 to his name so far, will also be back with a stack of 57,300. Other notables who made it through include: Andrew Ferguson (109,600), Alex Lynskey (86,800), Andrew Teng (79,000), Seth Webber (70,800), Ben Jenkins (56,600), and Gareth Chantler (28,000). 
Of course not everyone was as lucky, good - or more likely a combination of the two - as those above. It looked for a while like we might have a fairytale story on the UKIPT as Kev Butler stormed into an early lead, growing his stack to 135,000 at the mid-point of day after picking up queens and knocking out two opponents who both had ace-king. The PokerStars qualifier had got into this event for just £10 in a 3x-Turbo re-buy satellite and had managed to win his seat without re-buying or adding on. A hat tip to Ward for unearthing this story and letting the PokerStars Blog know about it. Unfortunately for Butler his stack came crashing down and he was eliminated before the end of play. He was in good company though as in the final throws of the day EPT12 Malta champion Niall Farrell was knocked out whilst earlier on the likes of Ludovic Geilich, Thomas Dunwoodie, Jamie O'Connor, Alan Gold, Steiner Edduson (one of ten players from Iceland in the field today!), Tom Hall, Chris Ferguson, Owain Carey, Jack Ellwood, Dan Stacey, Deborah Worely-Roberts, Kelly Saxby, Gordon Huntly, Pablo Gordillo, Fraser Macintyre, Vicente Delgado, Max Silver and two-time UKIPT champion Nick Abou Risk were also knocked out. 
The 72 who did make it through will join the 29 survivors from Day 1A when play starts at noon on Saturday. The plan will be to play 10 one-hour levels which should get us down to the final two tables if not the final table. The overnight chip counts and seat draw will be posted on the blog overnight and also tweeted from the @PokerStarsBlog account. You can catch up with all today's action by clicking on the links below, but for now so long, see you tomorrow. Levels 1-7 Levels 8-12 All photos are copyright of Mickey May, she hasn't had her daily dose of Nandos today (other chicken based restaurants available) so will go clucking mad should you steal them without permission. Credit her and her eggcellent images if using them please.