Hu Bags Chip Lead in WSOP Circuit Rotterdam High Roller; Gieles Still In to Defend Title
A hectic first day of the €2,750 High Roller at the World Series of Poker International Circuit has come to an end after fourteen levels in the Holland Casino in Rotterdam. Initially, the tournament was supposed to play twelve levels of 40-minutes each but during the first level of the day, all players agreed to change the duration of the levels to 30 minutes and play 14 levels instead. During the day, 57 entries were attracted to the biggest buy-in tournament of the series and only 21 players have made it through to Day 2.
David Hu finished at the top of the chip counts with 316,500 in chips. Hu chipped up early in the day and kept chipping up throughout the day to get to the top of the counts and stay there. Hu is followed closely by Gary Hasson from Belgium. Third in the counts is Tom Vogelsang with 266,900 who was happy to have bagged more than Teun Mulder who finished fifth in the chip counts with 208,200. Joris Ruijs takes fourth place with 234,000 after having had to reenter at some point in the day.
Gazmen Bekteshi, Vojtech Ruzicka, and Roland Rokita were the only other players to have bagged an above average stack. But the rest of the field contains many well-known players still in the running. Players like Jonathan Abdellatif, Govert Metaal, Gregory Luttke-Grech, Alexandre Reard, Rens Feenstra, and Zhong Chen have all found a bag to put chips in.
Luuk Gieles was down to his last 10,000 but managed to build that stack back up to 98,400 to keep on defending his title. Abdelhakim Zoufri won this event in 2017 and had to reenter in the latter stages of Day 1 and ended up bagging 70,800. But not everyone was fortunate enough to do the same as Raoul Refos, Tobias Peters, Maksym Lavrov, Kevin Paqué, Sonny Franco, Javier Zarco, and Alberto Stegeman all busted.
But they don’t have to despair, the late registration and reentry period will remain open during the first two levels of Day 2. The 21 remaining players will return to the felt at 1 p.m. local time on Tuesday, November 19 to continue to battle it out to take down the tournament and win the WSOP Circuit Ring plus the first-place prize. The seat draw will be done at the start of Day 2 and posted by the PokerNews live reporting team as soon as possible. Play will continue with a restart of Level 14 which features a small blind of 1,500, big blind of 3,000, and big blind ante of 3,000. The level duration will be increased to 40 minutes each.
The Main Event will also recommence at 2 p.m. local time with Day 1b. Day 1c has been moved to 10 p.m. local time as it already featured a turbo structure and the organization wanted to give all players who participated in the High Roller to jump into the Main Event after getting eliminated. The PokerNews live reporting team will be there to cover both events with a winner taking the down the High Roller at the end of the day. Don’t miss out on the updates so make sure to return right here.