Denis Koprov Takes Decisive Chip Lead as Day 1b of the Main Event Draws to a Close

By Lisa Yiasemides

Another eight hours of poker action have taken place here at Casino Sochi and as the dust settled, it was Denis Koprov (pictured) who goes through as chip leader from this flight with a 231,500-chip stack.

Koprov is the only player to go through with over 200,000 in chips – not just today but overall so far. The man himself admitted the day had gone well pretty much from the start with “many hands” going his way. However, it wasn’t as simple as just getting the cards, Koprov elaborated whilst bagging up – telling WPT.com that he was “very satisfied” with his play throughout the day.

There was a total of 79 entries today (including re-entries), ten more than yesterday. Of those, 39 made it through. Also chipped up are Alexandr Shelukhin, who goes through in second place with a very healthy 195,000 chips. Razavi Seyed Mansour (159,000) takes third, and Ezequiel Waigel (135,000) and Uri Gilboa (132,900) complete the top five spots.

There were a host of big names, both local and international, who graced the felt in the Main Event today. The top of the counts read like a who’s who of the eastern European poker world, with Sergey Baburin (119,400), Maxim Lykov (118,700), Pavel Vershinin (117,100), Alexander Denisov (109,400), Andrey Kotelnikov (103,500), Andrey Plotnikov (102,200), Danilo Velasevic (102,200), Maksim Panyak (98,100) and Konstantin Puchkov (91,300) all bagging big.

Johan Guilbert (65400), Konstantin Maslak (66,300), Kiryl Radzivonau (62500), Andrey Danilyuk (45,000) and WPT Champions Club member Andrey Pateychuk (37,500) (pictured) also progress to Day 2 on Friday, albeit with a little more work to do.

Still, a bag is a bag and that is more than some notables were able to achieve by the end. Maksim Pisarenko, Dmitry Yurasov, Aleksey Gortikov, Vlada Stojanovic and Vadzim Lipauka were a few of the casualties.

They need not despair though, with three more starting flights yet to come and unlimited re-entries available in each. The next on the schedule is Day 1c, which follows the same structure as today’s flight and begins at 12 pm local time tomorrow.

That is when the WPT.com live updates team will be back to guide you through all the excitement from the moment cards are in the air, until the last chip has been bagged.

WPT UK photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha.