Michiel Brummelhuis
Ladies and gentlemen, that is your lot! A total of 108 players made it to the Show Centre at the Tróia Design Hotel for today’s Day 1a; around 40 of them made it through the day and will be joining us for Day 2 on Saturday.
Chip leader as the bagging and tagging gets underway is Dutch poker pro and serial do-weller Michiel Brummelhuis. He got the bulk of those chips by first flopping a straight against an unfortunate gent holding top pair, and then flopping a set of nines to bust another player. He’s been a huge chip leader since shortly after the dinner break, and he’s only increased his stack since then, finishing up on a massive 235,500. The next biggest stack is Dmitry Varlamov on just 110,300. Yikes.
Other players still in the running include Irish Open champion Ian Simpson (36,900), European Deepstack runner up Gary “McLovin” Clarke (94,500) and two-time Unibet Open finalists Tomasz Kozub (27,200) and Ruggiero Scommegna (48,400).
We’ll be back tomorrow with our second and final flight of Day 1 hopefuls. Among those expected to take to the felt are Dan Murariu, Mateusz Moolhuizen and Alex Hendriks. Play will begin at 12.30 on the dot so don’t be late – although we understand that there are some Welcome Drinks going on right now by the pool, so we’ll understand if you’re feeling just a little bit groggy…
