The veteran pro and recent EPT London runner-up, who we suspect might be good at poker, completely dominated play in the early stages of Day 1a and had the bulk of his stack by the third level.
From there he cruised to the finish, using his stack to pick up small pots at will and end the day just shy of the 200k mark.
Now based out of Malta with fellow pros Justin Bonomo and Ike Haxton, O'Dwyer is looking to continue his heater that started in 2011 and resulted in 10 final tables and live cashes for over $1.4 million.
Finn Lauri Varonen and Welshman Roberto Romanello are almost in striking distance with 165,150 and 115,475 in chips, respectively, but the rest of the field has a lot of work to do to catch up.
A relatively small field of 83 showed up along with O'Dwyer for Day 1a with 48 surviving to play Day 2 Wednesday.
Outside of Romanello, other notable names to keep a stack together today were Melanie Weisner (78,900), Simon Ravnsbaek (58,900), Martins Adeniya (47,075), former footballer Jan Molby (34,925), David Vamplew (31,825), Arnaud Mattern (19,900) and Pierre Neuville (15,000).
Blom, Lodden, Hansen Expected for Day 1b
As with most events, Day 1b is set to be the larger starting day with several big name pros expected to be in attendance.
PokerStars pros Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, Johnny Lodden and Theo Jorgenson will all be on hand along with about 150 other players.
Denmark's most famous pro, Gus Hansen, also hinted on his blog he might drop by for a run at the EPT Copenhagen title.
Action starts up again at noon from Casino Copenhagen; catch the live updates on the PokerStars blog.
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