Over the past few years the PokerStars EPT London tournament has grown into one of the most prestigious tournaments in the poker world; with a huge prize-pool and attracting some of the most notable poker players from across the globe, the 2011 running of the EPT London, which began Friday, is expected to be the biggest yet.

With two scheduled starting days, the EPT London got off to a decent start Friday, as 280 players registered for the Main Event; leaving the tournament plenty of work to do if it plans on surpassing last year’s 848 total entrants. Last year, a total of 339 players registered on Day 1a, leaving the 2011 EPT London about 60 players of last year’s pace –but as we’ve seen in other recent tournaments Day 1b’s can have very, VERY, large turnouts. Tournament officials are preparing for at least 500 entrants on Day 1b, which would challenge last year’s record.

At the end of Day 1a a number of notable names managed to bag up a considerable amount of chips, including Barry Greenstein, Nick Binger, and Jake Cody, all three of whom ended the night in the unofficial Top 10.

Of the 280 original entrants, 175 survived the day, including Doyle Brunson, who was playing in his first-ever EPT event, and is likely staying in Europe for the WSOP Europe in Cannes, considering he was named as part of Phil Hellmuth’s 2011 Caesars Cup Team. Other big names who managed to bag-and-tag their chips Friday night were: Sebastian Ruthenberg, Roberto Romanello, Darren Elias, Pierre Neuville, Arnaud Mattern, Mickey Petersen, Nacho Barbero, Jonathan Karamalikis, JP Kelly, Luke Schwartz, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Andre Akkari, Lex Veldhuis, Chris Bjorin, Chris Moorman, Ville Wahlbeck, Theo Jorgensen, Andreas Hoivold, Ana Marquez, Ludovic Lacay, Anton Ionel, Tobias Reinkemeier, Ram Vaswani, Johnny Lodden, November Niner Samuel Holden, Randy Dorfman, last year’s champion David Vamplew, Barny Boatman, McLean Karr, Joseph Cheong, and James Akenhead.

Here is a look at the unofficial top 10 chip counts at the end of play:

1. Lev Marymsky — 155,000

2. Nick Binger — 138,000

3. Jeremy Kottler — 137,000

4. Umberto Vitagliano — 136,000

5. Mustapha Kanit — 108,000

6. Marcelo Simonesmesqueu — 107,000

7. Steve Billirakis — 90,000

8. Barry Greenstein — 79,000

9. Jake Cody — 75,000

10. Philipp Gruissem — 68,000

Day 1b will kick off at Noon local time, with eight levels scheduled to be played before players head off to bed for the evening. On Sunday the two starting days’ fields will be combined for official Day 2 of the tournament.

Tags: Barny Boatman, Barry Greenstein, Binger, Chris Moorman, Doyle Brunson, EPT, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Ionel, Johnny Lodden, Jp Kelly, London Tournament, phil hellmuth, poker players, Poker World, PokerStars, Prestigious Tournaments, Prize Pool, Ram Vaswani, Romanello, Tournament Officials

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