It's a quiet moment on media row at the mid-point of level six. One PokerStars.com blogger is talking to the one and only PokerStars.pl (Poland) blogger about the tournament to date.

Dot.com: "I just heard that Marcin Horecki has close to 70,000."
Dot.pl: "No, he's got about 17,000. That's all. But I'll check."

[PAUSE]

Dot.pl goes galloping across the tournament floor to catch up with the Team PokerStars Pro from Zakopane, Poland.

Dot.pl: "It's true. He's got 72,000. He had two big hands. Here.

Dot.pl hands scrap of paper to Dot.com.

Dot.com: I can't read it. What does it say? You need to read it out so that it will fit into the contrived dramatic structure of the next post that I haven't yet thought of, but will retrospectively demand.


Marcin Horecki

Dot.pl Sure. He had ace-king against queens just after the dinner break and that doubled him up to about 34,000. Then he got aces and flat called pre-flop when another player raised. The flop came A-3-2 and they both checked and then the turn was another ace, so he had quads already. The other player went all in, Horecki called and that's how he got to 72,000.
Dot.com: Brilliant.

[PAUSE. SILENCE.]

The tournament continues.

Last year the intrepid explorers hired by the European Poker Tour discovered a new part of their continent. It was here in the Bahamas, previously erroneously considered to be part of the Americas, but established now - and forever more - as a wonderful outcrop of Europe.

Making themselves at home this afternoon around the same table in the centre of the Imperial Ballroom are three stalwarts of the other wing of the EPT, the one that takes place in the land-mass more traditionally referred to as Europe.

They are Ludovic Lacay, from France, Juan Maceiras, the PokerStars sponsored player from Spain, and Sebastian Ruthenberg, the PokerStars ShootingStar from Germany. They each sat around a final table on the EPT in 2008: Lacay in Warsaw on season five, Maceiras in the same city in season four, and Ruthenberg in Barcelona, where he ended up with everyone else's chips for his first EPT crown.


Juan Maceiras

Ruthenberg added that to a World Series bracelet won in Las Vegas last summer and Maceiras took down a weekly Bellagio $1,000 event in June, proving they can travel well.


Sebastian Ruthenberg

Ludovic Lacay

Here it's Lacay making the most head-way, with about 114,000 going into the dinner break. Ruthenberg had been down to around 5,000 before he surged back to 25,000 and Maceiras tripled up with pocket fives, cracking queens and jacks in the same hand when he flopped a set.

It's a table worth watching, whatever part of Europe, on whichever side of the Atlantic, you come from.

* * * * *

The Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu is out - choosing the wrong time to defend his small blind with a 5-7. It was folded round to the button, who made it 2,000 to go (blinds are 400-800 in level eight). Negreanu, sitting on only 7,000 or so, called from the small blind and the big blind came along for the ride. The flop came 4-5-9, two hearts, and Negreanu turned on the speech play. "What's the best way to play this?" he asked out loud. "That hit me. Err, I'm all in."

The big blind folded but the button, the original pre-flop raiser, called and showed pocket jacks that by the time the turn and river had come 9-J had become a full house. Negreanu had been hit by that flop, but his middle pair didn't improve that much.

It's day 1A at the PCA and the tournament officials have told us that 660 players stumped up the $10,000 for a shot at the big time. These days, that's small-fry for the likes of Ylon Schwartz, the PokerStars Million Dollar Man who cruised to fourth in the World Series Main Event this summer (and autumn) and earned $3.8m for his troubles.

It's also a fairly small drop in the ocean of Scott Montgomery, another player who extended their summer foray to Las Vegas into the final table shebang in November. He took $3.1m for fifth place, staring across the same felt as Schwartz for several hours at the Penn and Teller Theater as they went to battle for those vast amounts.

Flash forward a couple of months to the Bahamas and Schwartz and Montgomery have renewed their acquaintance around the same day one table. There were more than 60 tables at the start of the day and they wound up right opposite one another again.

Both made comfortable starts, pushing their stacks up around the 25,000 mark. But that's before the good got way better for Schwartz. Looking at a flop of Kc-3d-9h, Schwartz's opponent bet 2,000, to which the Million Dollar Man added another 3,000 on the button. Call. The 6h turned and both players checked. Then the 8c came on the river and the original bettor fired 7,500 at it, prompting Schwartz to move all in for another 17,500. Think, think, call. Schwartz showed his pocket kings for the flopped set and he's now north of 50,000.

On a neighbouring table, there was a familiar Canadian chirp coming from the mouth of the Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu. "What do I think of my table?" he said. "None of them are going to make it through the day. They're all totally nuts online guys who play like they're crazy."

This, of course, was part mimicry of a another well-known live-action professional, and part tongue-in-cheek gibing at the stacked talents around him. One of them is indeed an "online guy" whose playing style might on occasion be described as "totally nuts". But few could doubt that there is a ruthless and effective method behind this particular online guy's madness: it's Chris Moorman, the British player better known as Moorman1 when he's rocketing to the top of all the online ranking ladders.

Negreanu and Moorman have kept out of one another's way to date, but we fully expect that to change in the levels to come.

In many respects covering a huge poker tournament, both in terms of field size and prestige, is markedly easier than dealing with a smaller event. Although it's easy to be daunted by the mammoth line-up and long, long hours, one does not have to travel too far to find a story. And that's good for the shoe leather.

"I'm looking for some of the young online superstar players," said a friend a moment ago. He is the editor of a UK-based poker magazine and he was seeking to put faces to the names he reads about on the poker forums and in the results lists.

We didn't even have to move. "There's Danny Ryan," I said, pointing to the table immediately in front of where we stood. "He's THE_D_RY. And over there is apestyles, or Jon Van Fleet." That was one table behind.


Danny Ryan

Jon Van Fleet

A few paces across the room and there was John "PearlJammer" Turner. Behind him was a table featuring Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke and Shaun "shaundeeb" Deeb. One step in the other direction was Adam "ajunglen" Junglen. We hadn't even covered half the tables.


Jimmy Fricke (seat one) and Shaun Deeb (seat four)

None of these players are much north of 25-years-old and most are significantly younger. We can safely expect a sizeable handful of the ever-growing crop of online professionals to go very deep into the money here, and few would bet against an all-out victory.

After all, there are rumours that ElkY had played the odd hand of online poker before his success here last year.