The second starting day of the €1,000 + €100 Main Event of the 2015 Unibet Poker Open at the Casino Barriere at the French Riviera in Cannes attracted another 229 entries in total to bump up the overall field to 411 unique participants.
Once the registration was closed at the end of level four, the payouts were released and the top 45 spots receive at least €2,210 while the winner can look forward to a payday of €80,000 on Sunday.
Once the 10 levels of one hour each were done and dusted, only 62 players bagged up chips and will be joining the 62 Day 1a survivors as of 13:00 local time on Saturday. Julien Sitbon remains the overall chip leader with his 354,300 from Day 1a, however fellow Julien, Pecheur that is, came very close and bagged up 344,000 on the second starting day.
He is closely followed by Olivier Jach (313,500) and Michael Lancri (297,500), other notables with above-average stacks include Nicolay Langfeldt (265,400), Vyacheslav Igin (217,000), Mateusz Syc (171,000) and 2013 Irish Open champion Ian Simpson (102,600).
It was not a good day for everyone at the office though. More than two third of the field were sent to the rail and that included such familiar names as Charlotte van Brabander, EPT10 Malta winner Jean Montury, Nicolas le Floch, Alexandre Reard, Rasmus Agerskov, Paul Valkenburg, Philippe Ktorza and 2015 Unibet Open Glasgow winner Daniel Chutrov. Mikael Azoulay entertained his table and peeked at 250,000 chips before imploding and spreading the shrinking tower of chips among his opponents.
The remaining 121 hopefuls will return to the tables at 13:00 local time for level 11 at blinds 1,200-2,400 and a running ante of 300. Whether or not the final table for Sunday will be determined already is yet to be seen, but the top 45 spots and money is definitely part of the excitement on the penultimate day of the event. The PokerNews live reporting will be there to provide you with the key hands until a winner is crowned and you can also check out the live stream on a delay of 30 minutes as well.
