Is is the 8th of Feb 2006 and the start of the European Poker Tour in Deaville.





With around 450 players all playing for the first prize of €xxxxx .


Players begin with 10,000 in chips, with the blinds starting at 25-50 and increasing every hour.


Flight 1 starts with 209 players......


With hours of play, we're now down to fewer than 100 players and they're posting blinds of 300 and 600, with a running ante of 50. It's level eight, in other words. The average stack is just over 20,000.


As far as we can see, the chip leader is Fredrik Hostrup, from Denmark, who plays on PokerStars as Mr Swatch. Marc Naalden is hot on his heels - and on the same table - with round about 54,000.


And, as it must be, we have lost some. Those include Tiffany Williamson, Pascal Perrault, Xuyen Pham, Cecilia Nordenstam, Alex Bowler (PokerStars qualifier), Marcel Luske, Carlos Mortenson, Martin Wendt.


We just heard the familiar roar that shouts "big pot" echo across the ballroom. Three players all-in pre-flop: there are one pair of aces, and two pairs of kings. Only on the internet, huh?


Here's a selected chip count, timed at 11pm. We've got three hours left.


Frederik Hostrup 65,000
Henrik Olander 28,500

Marc Naalden 54,000
Michel Abeplassis 36,000

Malcolm Gorse (PokerStars qualifer) 31,300
Joseph Shechter (PokerStars qualifier) 39,500

Marc Telstcher 19,000
Roy Brindley 38,000

Patrik Antonius 34,000
David Pomroy 5,2000

John Falconer 16,000
Robert Cohen 6,000

Patric Mortensson 37,000
Roland de Wolfe 34,500

Simon Young (Team PokerStars) 6,300
Philip Hilm 5,800

Ross Boatman 11,000
Noah Boeken 27,000

Ram Vaswani 48,000
Torstein Iversen 35,500

Danny Ticer (PokerStars qualifer) 30,000
David O'Callaghan 15,500

John Caldwell 7,800
Peter Eichhardt 15,000

Ken Johnson (PokerStars qualifer) 30,000
Dave Clayton 7,000

James Dempsey 45,000




Reported by Howard Swains at Pokerstars