WSOP Europe / Dave Allan / 28 September 2009 / Leave a comment

Day 1b at the WSOPE main event ended a little after midnight, last night, with some big names still in the mix. The likes of Eric Liu, Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu and Noah Boeken have amassed good chips stacks whilst local boys Keith "The Camel" Hawkins, Praz Bansi and Betfair Poker's John Tabatabai are all in the top half of the pack.

The day ended with a surprising number of players remaining. 178 took their seats but 107 survived which represented a far higher percentage of survivors compared to Day 1a. Although some of those survivors are clinging on for dear life at this stage. Barry Greenstain, Gabe Kaplan and Scotty Nguyen will all be looking for a good early start to Day 2 if they are to build on their short stacks and catch up the current chip leader Brian Powell. Powell is sitting pretty with almost 200,000 chips from Day 1a and due to the "grindy" nature of Day 1b his nearest rival from yesterday is Steve Zolotow, some 40,000 chips behind.

Betfair Poker's pro players are well positioned for Day 2. John Tabatabai had a superb day. He picked up 85,800 chips before play concluded, placing him in 6th position for the day and towards the top of the Day 1s counts combined. Annette Obrestad had a very solid day too. She is also towards the top of the Day 1b runners with 51,950 chips and looks very focused as she aims to recapture the title she won in 2007.

The top ten players and their chip counts from Day 1b are:

Steve Zolotow - 160000
Praz Bansi - 130000
Antoine Saout - 121000
Noah Boeken - 118000
Ram Vaswani - 110000
John Tabatabai - 85800
Daniel Negreanu - 82450
Matt Hawrilenko - 82000
Antonio Esfandiari - 78000
Keith 'The Camel' Hawkins - 76000

Day 2 resumes today at the slighter later than normal time of 5.30pm UK time. As players enjoy a lay in bed this morning followed by a leisurely lunch, we look forward to a mouth watering day of action at The Casino at Empire, in London as the WSOPE main event makes and breaks the dreams of the world's top poker players. Follow all the action as it happens at our WSOPE LIVE UPDATES AND CHIP COUNTS page.