Yves Rolland Leads After Day 1A in Marrakech; Kalidou Sow Among Big Stacks

Casino de Marrakech Es Saadi

Day 1A of the 2018 WPTDeepStacks Marrakech Main Event, which comes with a buy-in of 13,200 MAD (~1,200 EUR), has seen a field of 161 entries emerge at the stunning Casino de Marrakech Es Saadi. The World Poker Tour returned to Morocco for the fifth consecutive year and once again, many French and Spanish players were among those to take a shot at glory.

One year ago, the inaugural WPTDeepStacks Marrakech Main Event attracted a field of 433 entries and Smain Mamouni took home the trophy and payday of 1,000,000 MAD (~110,000 USD) to France. Back then, the tournament consisted of a single starting day and that has since changed to two starting days. The first of two flights gathered a total of 161 entries, which includes 22 re-entries, and 53 hopefuls bagged up chips.

Best-positioned after Day 1A to follow into the footsteps of Mamouni is Frenchman Yves Rolland after claining the top spot in the last levels of the night, bagging up 212,000. He is followed by Morocco’s Boubekeur Benhalima with 200,000 and Jim Azazgour claims the last spot on the over night podium with a stack of 190,500.

Kalidou Sow among big stacks after Day 1A

Not even one big blind behind is Kalidou Sow, who has experienced an extraordinary string of results in the past 12 months with several victories to his name. Sow already has a WPTDeepStacks trophy in the current year after taking down the High Roller Event during the last festival in Vilamoura, and the Frenchman is set for another deep run in Marrakech after bagging up 190,000 on Day 1A. The WPT live reporting team spoke with Sow during the first break of the day and you can read up on the interview here.

Further notables among the Day 1A survivors include Said Haho (178,000), Pascal Rabany (118,000), Jeremy Saderne (105,000), 2017 WPTDeepStacks Europe Player of the Tobias Peters (86,000), Andris Resevskis (71,500) and UK’s Guy Taylor (69,000). Said El Yousfi, who already has decent results in Marrakech to his name, also made it through and advanced with 56,000.

All those that were less fortunate and ran out of chips entirely during the 12 levels of 40 minutes each can enter again on Day 1B, which kicks off at 1 p.m. local time on Friday, September 28th 2018. This may or may not include Imad Derwiche, Guillaume Darcourt, Yuri Ishida, Stephan Gerin, Francois Tosques and Jerome Sgorrano.

At the time of writing, there were still seven players remaining in the 20,000 MAD High Roller that attracted a field of 157 entries. Only the top 20 spots were paid and Mounim Kaddouri was the bubble boy. Among those to take home a portion of the prize pool already were such notables as Fadhil Farag, Sebastien Compte, Pedro Cairat, Muhyedine Fares and Anas Tadini. The winner takes home the trophy and a payday of 650,000 MAD.

Tune back in tomorrow for the second and final starting day here in Marrakech.