Dmitri Zatsik Ended Day 1a of the Coolbet Open Main Event as Chipleader
The first-ever Coolbet Open Main Event hosted by Olympic Park Casino and Hilton Tallinn Park was a huge success with 104 entrants ponying up the �550 buy-in.
This represents a considerably larger turnout than the 70-80 entrants estimated before the start of the day by tournament organizers. Tomorrow's action is expected to be much bigger for the second and final opening flight with the plethora of online qualifiers in the field.
Players began the today's deep-stacked action with 30,000 in chips and battled it out for eight blinds levels of 45 minutes each. Those bagging chips will enjoy an even deeper structure for Day 2 and Day 3 on May 4-5 with 60-minute blind levels.
More than half of today's field survived with 63 of the 104 players bagging chips. Estonia's Dmitri Zatsik ending the day as the Day 1a chip leader with 163,700 in chips.
On Zatsik's tail are United Kingdom's Craig Timmis with 152,600 in chips and Norway's Jan C. Kongsgard with 150,300 in chips. Other players a bit further behind but bagged six-figure stacks were Mauri Dorbek (106,100), Aleksei Smirnov (106,100), Andrei Mjagkov (101,900), and Sergei Aleksejev (100,200).
In other news, Coolbet founder Jan Svendsen and his friend and Swedish entrepreneur Martin "Franke" von Zweigbergk had a friendly rivalry taking place. This is due to Coolbet offering odds on which player would both cash the event and last longer than the other.
Both Svendsen and von Zweigbergk started off hot by nearly doubling their stack. Svendsen eventually busted his stack and reentered and was eliminated for the second time.
Meanwhile, von Zweigbergk had trouble staying in his seat and was away from the table more than he was at the table. He eventually got it all-in with nine-six offsuit and after failing to win the hand hit the rail as well. We will see more of this friendly rivalry tomorrow as both players shared they plan to reenter tomorrow's Day 1b field.
Also eliminated today was Coolbet invited Norwegian boxer Kevin Melhus, who was the first fighter to win a professional match on home soil. During one of the breaks, Melhus shared his thoughts on both boxing and poker live on Facebook with PokerNews.
Day 1b of the Main Event will kick off at 2 p.m. local time tomorrow with many new players and many of the same players from today that were unable to survive.
As was the case today, the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on the floor to provide complete coverage tomorrow and beyond until a winner is declared.