The inaugural 2023 WSOP Circuit Tallinn kicked off on Thursday with a bang with Event #1: €555 No-Limit Hold'em making its debut with the first of four opening flights.
Day 1a attracted 55 runners with 28 players bagging stacks into Saturday's Day 2. Raivo Pinsel (pictured above) was the star of the show after manipulating his 30,000 opening stack into a whopping pile of 219,000 in chips.
Nobody came close to Pinsel with Topi Palenius (107,500), Ilya Nikiforov (92,000), Igor Pihela (81,000; pictured below), and Jose Zaragosa (78,500) all finishing in the top five.
Players will have another shot tonight at 7 p.m. with Day 1b, also featuring ten blind levels of 30 minutes each.
Players surviving any of the four opening flights will play for two more days until a winner is crowned for the first ring event on Sunday. Meanwhile, check out all of the Day 1a chip counts below:
Player | Chips | Big Blinds |
Raivo Pinsel | 219,000 | 146 |
Topi Palenius | 107,500 | 72 |
Ilya Nikiforov | 92,000 | 61 |
Igor Pihela | 81,000 | 54 |
Jose Zaragoza | 78,500 | 52 |
Mart Rinken | 72,500 | 48 |
Athanasios Kostouros | 68,000 | 45 |
Richard Randolph Jr | 68,000 | 45 |
Vladislav Topilskiy | 62,000 | 41 |
Kert Hallik | 61,500 | 41 |
Enea Subashi | 58,000 | 39 |
Marco Baglioni | 49,500 | 33 |
Magnus Pukk | 49,500 | 33 |
Rasmus Sepping | 48,500 | 32 |
Rauno Remmel | 48,000 | 32 |
Yi-Zhan Peng | 47,000 | 31 |
James Little | 46,500 | 31 |
Vasilij Barna | 44,500 | 30 |
Mairo Tori | 44,500 | 30 |
Alari Kadanik | 43,500 | 29 |
Raimo Reimann | 43,500 | 29 |
Dominik Ostrowski | 36,500 | 24 |
Daniele Venditti | 36,000 | 24 |
Matts Jakobsson | 34,500 | 23 |
Victor Fernandez Garcia | 30,500 | 20 |
Alessandro Angotti | 29,500 | 20 |
Michailas Miserkejevas | 22,500 | 15 |
Tanel Merida | 13,000 | 9 |
The poker world has been gearing up for the first visit of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) to Estonia with the WSOP Circuit Tallinn handing out 12 coveted WSOP gold rings from Sept. 14-24 at Olympic Park Casino and the adjoining Hilton Tallinn Park. This is on top of dozens of side events and cash games running around the clock at a variety of stakes and games.
While the highlight of the festival is easily the €1 million guaranteed WSOP Circuit Tallinn Event #6: €1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Main Event, we will have plenty of other events to update you on as we plan to report on every ring event outside of the online ring event with coverage beginning on Saturday for Day 2 of Event #1: €555 No-Limit Hold'em.
Event #1 boasts four opening flights on Sept. 14-15 with players starting off with a deep stack of 30,000 in chips. Blinds increase slowly at every 30 minutes throughout the tournament. Players will have plenty of time to build a stack with unlimited re-entries not only permitted during the 10 blind levels of Day 1 but also during the first two blind levels of Saturday's Day 2. The plan for Saturday is to play down to a final table of nine players which will be live-streamed at OlyBet.tv with hole cards exposed.
We will update you with photos, ending chip counts, and vital statistics from all of the opening flights with detailed coverage to begin when cards are in the air on Saturday.