PokerWorks

The World Series of Poker Europe kicked off its inaugural L10,000 Main Event on Tuesday, with superstars from all around the globe scattered across three London casinos all hitting the felt to vie for the WSOP Europe Main Event title. Day 1a play featured stars like Barry Greenstein, Greg Raymer, Thor Hansen, Humberto Brenes, Liz Lieu and Noel Furlong, plus a host of high-profile railbirds like Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan, who are scheduled to play later in the week.

Because of the size of the field, the WSOP Europe Main Event was spread out over three London casinos, the Fifty, The Empire Casino and the Sportsman. Players will play in the three casinos until the field shrinks enough to all fit into the Empire. This marks the first chance for superstars like Brunson, Chan and Raymer to become intercontinental WSOP Champions. So far, no one has won both a WSOP bracelet and a WSOP Europe bracelet.

Seeking to be the first player to do just that, Phil Hellmuth arrived amidst a bevy of beauties on a red, double decker bus, managing to avoid wrapping the bus around any lampposts. In an odd strategy for Hellmuth, he arrived on time and played all the levels of the event, a change from his typical fashionable late arrivals. In standard Hellmuth fashion, he finished the day near the top of the leaderboard, second in chips behind Janne Lamsa.

Jennifer Harman continued her solid week at the WSOP Europe with a strong showing throughout Day 1a. Harman finished 2nd in the WSOP Europe L2,500 HORSE tournament earlier this week, behind Thomas ‘Buzzer' Bihl. Bihl also played on Day 1a, but was eliminated in the early going. The internet superstars were out in force, with Sorel ‘Imper1um' Mizzi, Brian Townsend and Annette ‘Annette_15' Obrestad joining the Day 1a field. Obrestad spent some time with Hellmuth at the TV feature table, and joined him near the top of the chip stacks at the end of the day.

With that many poker superstars in one tournament, some were bound to head to the rail, and among those eliminated on Day 1a were Todd Brunson, Freddy Deeb, Andy Bloch and John Juanda. Both Michael and Robert Mizrachi took the field on Day 1a, with similar results. Shortly after Robert was eliminated, The Grinder was sent to the rail when he flopped a set of threes against Husevin Yilmaz, who was only too happy to get all his chips in the middle with his flopped set of tens. No one-outer for The Grinder, and Michael Mizrachi finished his Day 1 early.

When the dust settled from Day 1a, the top ten chip stacks overall looked like this -

Janne Lamsa - 115,850
Huseyin Yilmaz - 99,575
Phil Hellmuth - 82,825
Andrew Feldman - 76,650
Patrick Bruel - 71,225
Priyan De Mel - 67,900
Gary ‘The Choirboy' Jones - 65,425
Paul Ephremsen - 64,875
Simon Wing - 64,150
Terry Cook - 63,700

Also finishing strong on Day 1a were Ram Vaswani, Dave Colclough, Jeff "ActionJeff" Garza and William Durkee. The field for Day 1b is just as stacked, with players like Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo, Daniel Negreanu, Alex Kravchenko and Isabelle Mercier scheduled to play.