Published on
Update on

The 2018 World of Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe has kicked off with Day 1 offering quite a few surprises, with Shaun Deeb and Allen Kessler getting eliminated from the very start. This will open the playfield for new poker players and secreted talents. Here’s what happened.

The 2018 World of Series of Poker Europe promises to bring a lot of treats for those who can win them based on their prowess and understanding of the game alone. The event has started allocating the the first set of ten golden bracelets that the World Series of Poker intend to dish out.

Day 1 started with the €550 COLOSSUS No-Limit Hold’em and saw 154 entrants take their best shot at the game. Among those, 31 players decided to re-enter the competition after getting tossed out first.

The competition was indeed quite fierce, allowing mere 12 contestants to actually make it into Day 2, which is taking place after a short break on Sunday, October 14. As the first leg is now done and dusted, Polish player Dariusz Glinski is ahead of the pack with his 669,000 chips.

Going Bust and Smarting After

A lot of European flocked to the continent’s arguably largest poker competition. But the locals were far from the only representatives with quite the thicket of gamers joining in, including Jeff Lisandro, Chris Ferguson, Dutch Boyd and a handful others.

With poker being a truly international game, geography has little say over who is the most deserving. The game went at a heady pace and gamers were dropping quicker than they could process this information. Despite the overseas competition, the final 12 were heavily represented by countries from the Old Continent.

Another Polish, Marcin Jaworski, ended up 5th, with 364,000 chips ready to play. In fact, the only non-European to survive the heat of the locals was Ricardo Chauriye from Chile who finished 12th, managing to secure himself a spot in the second day of the competition.

All the known names of European poker were there making it easy to understand why many of the overseas players weren’t quite so lucky when it comes to topping the field. Among the strong competitors were Teunis Kooji, Sander van Wesemael, Martin Kabrhel and many others who made the competition exciting.

Naturally, not all of them managed to perform well during the tournament and many succumbed to an early fate of elimination. However, many persevered, including little-known German player Gerrit Muller. Even with his 544,000 chips, Muller should know that tumbling from a hero to zero is a rather easy thing, and arrogance in poker has to be earned.

WSOPE – A Great Opportunity for Europeans

The WSOPE is a unifying event bringing together contesters from varied backgrounds. But more importantly, the tournament provides everyone with sufficient opportunities to build a career in poker and earn a name for themselves in the process.

Not to mention the visible monetary rewards that are allocated to players of all skill levels. With its initiative, WSOPE will see the popularity of the game grow, even though Europe is quite conflicted on poker.