European Poker Tour London Draws Record Field

The European Poker Tour London Main Event has drawn a record crowd, as the field of 848 players makes it the largest tournament ever held in England.

The EPT London Main Event had a buy-in of £5,250, making the large field all the more impressive. The strong turnout means that the prize pool is also quite large; first prize is £900,000, while each of the 128 players who will cash in the event can expect to take home at least £7,500.

Because of the large number of entrants, the field was split into two days, Day 1A and Day 1B, with the majority of players opting for the second day of play. Among those in the field on Day 1B who survived to Day 2 were Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey, who finds himself among the chip leaders after the first day of play. In all, 389 players made it through to Friday’s play, when the two schedules will merge.

While official chip counts were not available at the time of this writing, the chip leader appears to be Claudio Cecchi of Italy, who has a stack of approximately 250,000 chips. Cecchi doesn’t have any major wins to his credit, but he has had limited success over the past two years in Italy, as well as two cashes in European Poker Tour events. His live winnings amount to about $183,000.

Only one other player in the tournament appears to be over 200,000 chips: Day 1A leader Soheb Porbandarwala. The Connecticut resident is a relative unknown, having only a few small cashes to his credit.

Many star players have already been eliminated from the tournament. Some of the more notable eliminations include Kathy Liebert, Viktor Blom, Dennis Phillips, Roland de Wolfe, and Marcel Luske.

The EPT London is taking place at the Hilton Metropole in Mayfair. In earlier action, Annette Obrestad topped a 64-player field to win the £5,000 heads-up tournament. In a tournament that featured best-of-three and best-of-five matches, Obrestad went an incredible 14-2 against her opponents to take the title. She won £120,000 for her first place finish.