A swath of Team PokerStars pros lead the charge and by the time the chips were bagged Jose “Nacho” Barbero and Vanessa Rousso had built up 100k-ish stacks to put them inside the top 30.
Barbero finished the day with 106,300 while Rousso was slightly behind with 96,400.
Chip leader to end the day is Frenchman Amir Salhani, who bagged up 191,000.
Lewis, Cody Close Behind
Several other big names managed to navigate the French field and will join the leaders on Day 2.
Decent-sized stacks include Martins Adeniya (115,200), Toby Lewis (93,200), Fatima Moreira de Melo (81,000), Jake Cody (78,400), Shannon Shorr (75,300), Ludovic Lacay (68,800) and Ari Engel (56,300).
Making it through the day but with below-average stacks were Liv Boeree, Bruno “Kool Shen” Lopes, Joe Ebanks and Kevin MacPhee.
Also making an appearance on Day 1b was famed Vegas rounder Scotty Nguyen, who survived to see Day 2 with a stack of 33,100.
Bye Bye Blom, ElkY
Big names hitting the rail on Day 1b included Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Vanessa Selbst, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, Eugene Katchalov, David Benyamine and Dario Minieri.
With 550 registering to play on Day 1b a total of 889 officially turned out for this edition of EPT Deauville, only two players short of the record 891 from last year.
All told it makes for a €4,267,200 prize pool with 128 spots paid and €875,000 for first.
Day 2 action begins at noon in Deauville tomorrow.
Follow the live updates in the PokerStars blog.
Official final-table payouts are as follows:
1. €875,000
2. €557,000
3. €328,000
4. €260,000
5. €200,000
6. €155,000
7. €110,000
8. €67,200
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