Yorky Pud

One hundred and ninety players entered the Olympic Casino inside the luxurious Swissotel in the centre of Tallinn, Estonia and exchanged €4,250 for 30,000 tournament chips. By the end of seven one-hour long levels 60 of them had busted out and the 130 survivors from Day 1b of EPT Tallinn were being lead by the phonetically sounding Oscar Lima of Spain.

The 23-year old from Zaragoza is playing in his first-ever EPT event and revealed that the only reason he chose this particular event was the fact it was the first stop on the calendar for this season. His decision has paid off so far as he not only ended Day 1b as the chip leader but leads the Main Event overall with 132,000 chips. Although Lima has no major live cashes to speak of due to him being a predominately online poker player, he does regularly play some of the higher buy-in multitable tournaments on a weekly basis.

Somebody else who had a great Day 1b was Jani Sointula who finished with a stack of 123,950 enough to put him in second place going into Day 3. Sointula is a very talented poker player and one who has accumulated close to $1,800,000 in live tournament winnings but he has not won a major tournament since he took down the Monte Carlo Millions back in 2004. Although there is still a long way to go in this event this could be the Finns best chance to rectify that as there are only 198 players remaining and he is well chipped up with more than three times the average stack.

But if he is to progress through to Day 3 and onwards he is going to have to overcome a very tough table today as he has drawn Table 12, which will be officially known as the Table of Doom. Sointula will be kept company by Britain's Mathew Frankland, fellow Finn Ville Wahlbeck, double WSOP bracelet winner Praz Bansi and John van Til, though the latter only has eight big blinds so could be off that table early doors.

Play resumes at 1200 noon local time (two hours in front of the UK) and the plan is to play at least five 75-minute levels with the possibility of a sixth depending on how frequent the eliminations are. They will not reach the money places today as only the top 40 finishers will receive payouts of between €6,500 and €275,000. Join us tomorrow to find out who is one step closer to EPT glory and who will have to wait until the upcoming EPT Barcelona to get their hands on that coveted trophy and prestigious title.