Here's a look at the World Series of Poker Europe events over the years leading up until 2011. The largest prize ever won was by Annette Obrestad in 2007 when she emerged victorious in the Main Event for £1,000,000. Also note that all of the events prior to 2011 were held in London at the Casino at the Empire. All buy-ins and prizes are in British pounds, but will be in Euros this year.
We headed over to Majestic 2 down the hall and found plenty of more names in the field. Jonathan Karamalikis, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, Nicolas Chouity and Richard Toth are all seated together at one table. On another table, Dan Smith, Joe Ebanks and Will "The Thrill" Failla are joined. Then there's a third stacked table in the room with Vladimir Shchemelev, Ludovic Lacay, Randy Dorfman and Joseph Cheong.
Our main focus will be on Majestic 1 today and players will be breaking into that room from Majestic 2. We'll wander over there from time to time in order to check in on things, but will keep most of our attention on this main room.
Other names in the room can be found in the list below.
Each player will begin the tournament with 3,000 chips in this event and each level will last sixty minutes. There is no set schedule for the day time wise, but play will last until 15% of the starting field today remains. Then on Day 1b tomorrow, the field will play the same amount of time as the players did today.
Welcome to the second event at the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe. Today's event should pack the tournament rooms here in Cannes from wall to wall on what is expected to be the largest tournament field in WSOP Europe history.
Back in 2009, the WSOP staff added a £1,000 buy-in event to the schedule. That event in 2009 was won by JP Kelly and he bested the largest-ever WSOP Europe field at 608 entrants. For his win back in 2009, Kelly took home £136,803. The smallest event previously was a £1,500 one in 2008.
As it stands right now, there's already around 275 players signed up for today's flight alone, meaning this should easily become the biggest. This year the buy-in is a little bit less because it's in Euros and not British Pounds and that's another reason this thing is going to explode.
Play is set to kick off here on Day 1a at noon local time and it's going to be a great one. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for all of the coverage.
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