O’Dwyer, an American who has basically dominated on the European poker circuit since Black Friday drove him out of the US, is again back up at the top of a tourney leaderboard with 118,000 chips – good for sixth place.
Rettenmaier, the first-ever back-to-back winner on the WPT last year, was also up to his usual standard and made it through the day above the average stack at 86,000.
Finn Kimmo Kurko is the chip leader at 149,700 followed by Russian Andrey Shatilov at 134,700.
Berglund, Blain and Scott Carry On
The fairly small turnout saw a somewhat limited list of marquee names at the felt although the youngest-ever WPT champ Lukas Berglund (78,900), Irishman Dermot Blain (55,000) and Party Poker rep/ESPN host Kara Scott (41,800) were among them.
Notables to arrive and bust out included Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen and former November Niner Scott Montgomery, although we can expect to see them back in the field for Day 1b tomorrow
The top 10 in chips after Day 1a:
1. Kimmo Kurko 149,700 2. Andrey Shatilov 134,700 3. Stjepan Jokic 130,300 4. Robert Hoogendoorn 128,000 5. Ismael Bojang 118,000 6. Steve O'Dwyer 118,000 7. Oswin Ziegelbecker 115,100 8. Alban Juen 103,300 9. Mihails Morozovs 100,300 10. Andreas Zauner 92,900Follow along live from Casino Baden at 2 pm local time with the WPT Live Updates team.
Part of the ongoing Vienna Mind Sports Festival, several other events have been running/are due to run alongside WPT Baden including an Open-Face Chinese Poker main event and backgammon, chess, CounterStrike, Risk and Scrabble tournaments.
Visit www.pokerlistings.com