Day 1a of the World Poker Tour’s latest stop in the bustling city of Marrakech, Morocco is just another example of why more and more tournaments are making their way to the North African destination. A solid 137 poker players turned out for Day 1a of the €5,000 tournament.

Last year’s WPT stop in Marrakech saw a total of 416 players enter the tournament, with only a single starting day for the tournament. It will be interesting to see if the tournament can exceed last year’s attendance mark with a strong Day 1b turnout.

So far Day 1a has belonged to poker pro Nicholas Levi who has built up a mammoth chip-stack, nearly double his nearest competitor. Other notables having a strong Day 1a showing are PokerStars Pro Toni Judet and long-time poker pro Surinder Sunar.

Here is a look at the top 10 chip-counts at the time of writing –there are about 2 hours remaining to be played today– according to the PokerNews.com live reporting team:

1.    Nicolas Levi — 172,000
2.    Manuel Bevand — 91,000
3.    Bruno Lopes — 64,000
4.    Toni Judet — 54,000
5.    Roman Collet — 52,000
6.    Joel Benzinou — 48,000
7.    Tristan Clemencon — 43,000
8.    Surinder Sunar — 41,000
9.    Peuriere Christophe — 41,000
10.    Christophe Leonetti — 39,500

Last year’s tournament was won by French poker pro Cristophe Savary who took home the top prize of €377,262, along with the title of WPT Champion.

Tags: Cristophe Savary, Marrakech, Nicholas Levi, Surinder Sunar, Toni Judet, WPT, WPT Marrakech

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