If you walk out of the Alpine Palace in Hinterglemm, walk across Dorfstrasse, up along Haidweg and look up, you’ll see three lights on the hillside, each moving very slowly, either up or down in the darkness. These are the lights of the caterpillar-tracked vehicles, flattening the snow (again, there must be a technical term) ahead of tomorrow’s slaloming tourists.
Hinterglemm by day
It’s a lonely job, carried out in near darkness, with only the headlights to illuminate the path back home and the consequences of a wrong turn to keep the driver awake and sharp. Rather conveniently the same goes for three players in the EPT Snowfest main event today, each playing on their wits, guided by the instinctive premise to keep moving forward, each bagging up most on Day 1A ahead of the second flight tomorrow.
Hinterglemm by night
Shining brightest is tonight’s chip leader Martins Adeniya, from the United Kingdom, who closed on 182,500 chips tonight, some way ahead of Dutch player Wim Bos in second place with 130,200 chips and Virgilio Dicicco on 122,100. All three set up promising base camps tonight in preparation for a summit assault, notably Adeniya who after having had his stack slashed set about rebuilding it in superb fashion.
Chip leader Martins Adeniya
But, as we suggested in the introduction to today’s play, you can’t win an EPT on the first day, you can only lose it and there were a good number from the starting field of 180 today who fall into that category, among them Team PokerStars Pros Arnaud Mattern, Marcin Horecki and Ruben Visser.
Team PokerStars Pro Arnaud Mattern
They’re joined in the relative comfort of the lobby, currently a hive of Sunday Million activity, by the likes of James Akenhead, the only woman in the field today Ekaterina Kolobekova, Stephen Chidwick and Rob Akery, the dearly departed, who left behind them a field of 102 at the close.
Stephen Chidwick
Of that crowd a trail of notables move about on the baby slopes. Unlike the chap who went spine-first-akimbo into a ski jump earlier today, they will return on Tuesday for Day 2. They include Team PokerStars Pros Alex Kravchenko and Michael Keiner; Josh Prager, Dominik Nitsche and Illari Tahkokallio, along with Casey Kastle and Giuseppe Pantaleo.
Josh Prager
Their chip counts can be found on the official chip count page while their progress, as well as all the stories from the day, can be found by following the links below…
Level 1 & 2 updates
Level 3 & 4 updates
Level 5 & 6 updates
Level 7 & 8 updates
Don’t forget, you can find the coverage from today on our foreign sister blogs (hang on, that sounds weird), with reports written in German, Dutch, Italian and French. Our thanks to them, and to photographer Neil Stoddart who celebrates his birthday today. The Blog team had a whip round and bought him a skiing trip in the Austrian Alps.
Goodnight from Hinterglemm
That’s all for today then. We’re back at 2pm local time tomorrow for Day 1B which promises to be bigger and better.
Join us then.
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