EPT11 Barcelona: Estrellas sets new records as 2,560 become 810 on Day 2

While the Super High Rollers play on they're surrounded by what remains of the Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event, which now enters its second day.

You might have already got heard, however the Estrellas main event piqued the interest from the poker community, both within Spain and without. Such a lot in order that the sector that combined over three starting days became the most important in ESPT history. Wait, make that PokerStars history: 2,560 players, is the largest freezeout tournament PokerStars has ever staged.

That followed a couple of other highlights, the former record being set on the BSOP event in Sao Paulo, Brazil last November, which boasted a field of 2,131. Then came the Beijing Millions last month. That had a foundations-creaking 2,732 players, but crucially this included a fair many re-entries.

As far as freezeouts go, that is nearly as good because it gets --so far.

The Estrellas Main Event field

The Barcelona festival remains to be a well-liked jumping off point for the season, a view surely shared overnight by chip leader Emma Wikberg, from Sweden, who bagged up 268,200 and the lead last night.

Wikberg, 32, is a part of a detailed community of ladies players in Stockholm, having taking over the sport back in 2004. She's now a typical within the cardrooms there, although she has not been as active on this past year because the birth of her first child.

Emma Wikberg

But her return to the sport was with aplomb, together with her seat in Barcelona won via a satellite in Stockholm. The year off seems to have worked.

She leads the 810 players returning today, with a top ten looking like this:

Emma Wikberg (Sweden) 268,200Liran Machluf (Israel) 239,300Marcos Fernandez (Spain) 239,000Jason Wheeler (USA) 216,500Kasper Linneman (Denmark) 211,900Endre Sagstuen (Norway) 210,000Daniel Reijmer (Netherlands) 209,300Steven Tabb (Portugal) 195,400Fernando Rodriguez (Spain) 195,200Denys Chufarin (Ukraine) 191,700

In terms of the sphere it's still heavily stacked, as you'd expect from a field that remains the dimensions of an EPT event. No fewer than 11 EPT champions remain, including Mikalai Pobal (127,400), Pieter de Korver (86,600), Kevin Stani (83,200), Roberto Romanello (69,500), Mickey Petersen (66,600), Ruben Visser (49,400), Anton Wigg (45,500), Christophe Benzimra (38,800), Kent Lundmark (38,800), Dimitar Danchev (32,300) and Robin Ylitalo (14,300).

Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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