Day 4 - Edinburgh Main Event

 

£500+£50 Main Event

130 runners

£70,000 prize pool, including £5,000 added

The 24^th February 2007 marks the first Main Event of the inaugural GBPT. Already the Festival has shown itself to be the most customer-friendly event in the British Isles. At a £500 entry for a major televised event, this is a tournament that all players can enter. We have seen a full field today including a large number of local players who would quite often be excluded from their own event if it was a larger buy-in. This has given these players the chance to play against some quality professionals and many have outlasted the likes of Ross and Barney Boatman, Joe Beevers, Surinder Sunar (rather unlucky with top pair on the flop) and 'The Gentleman' Liam Flood. The field included 18 online qualifiers from as far afield as Finland, and 11 are still with us at the end of the first day.

With such a tasty prize pool, play has been steady on day one, with lots of tight play, and at 3am on Sunday morning half the field was still in play, but a rather bloody last hour saw Ash Hussain, Iwan Jones, Neil Channinh and snooker-star Matthew Stevens fall.

Of the better known players, only Dave Colclough remained with a handy stack to take into day two, along with Friday's £200 NLHE winner Mohammed Irfan also looking comfortable. However George McKeever held sway with over 111,000 in chips, followed by Gerry O’Farrell, final-tablist in Friday's £200 event, just shy of 100,000.

At the close of play, 46 players remained for day two, with the following notable chip counts:

1. George McKeever – 111,800
2. Gerry O'Farrell – 99,675
3. Steve Jelinek – 80,450
4. H Granstad – 79,525
5. Mohammed Irfan – 74,075
6. Dave Colclough – 58,525
7. S Ross – 54,175
8. Stan Esson – 45,975
9. D Smith – 44,875
10. I Kuskinem – 44,450
11. Alister Keer – 40,050
12. S Tracey – 37,950

We look forward to recommencing at 2.30pm on Sunday, so it's off to get a little sleep before we find out who the winner of our first Main Event will be…

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