Day 1B of the 2022 The Festival Tallinn Main Event was more than twice the size of Day 1A, with 122 players piling into the Olympic Park Hotel. After ten levels of play, only 48 of those players still had chips in front of them, and nobody had a larger stack than Lasse Laukkarinen.
Laukkarinen finished the night with 196,200 chips, or 123 big blinds going into Day 2. The Finnish grinder is a regular in Tallinn, with nine of his 15 recorded live poker tournament results stemming from his play in the Estonian capital. Laukkarinen cashed in two events at the Coolbet Open in Tallinn in late May, and now looks to be set to add another in the money finish in The Festival Tallinn Main Event thanks to leading the tournament overall.
The Festival Tallinn Main Event Day 1B Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lasse Laukkarinen | 196,200 | 123 |
| 2 | Tapio Aaltonen | 187,100 | 117 |
| 3 | Michael Viggander | 150,000 | 94 |
| 4 | Mats Palokangas | 144,800 | 91 |
| 5 | Kaido Mikk | 129,600 | 81 |
| 6 | Aleksi Naski | 125,300 | 78 |
| 7 | Heidi Bekker | 124,400 | 78 |
| 8 | Ronny Albrigtsen | 123,200 | 77 |
| 9 | Sarunas Abdrachmanovas | 120,800 | 76 |
| 10 | Aleksiy Baranovskiy | 117,900 | 74 |
Tapio Aaltonen (187,100) bagged up enough chips for second place on the Day 1B overnight chip counts. Aaltonen won a huge flip with ace-king versus pocket eights on the hand before the final scheduled break of the flight, which put him up to 175,000 chips. He added another 12,100 chips to his stack during the last two levels.
Michael Viggander (150,000), Mats Palokangas (144,800), and Kaido Mikk (129,600) are the players rounding out the top five chip counts on what was the second of four scheduled Day 1s.
The incredible day of Coolbet ambassador Heidi Bekker is worthy of a mention. Bekker got off to a poor start and saw her 30,000 starting stack dwindle to only 8,000 chips at one stage. However, she not only fought back but ended Day 1B with 124,400 chips, enough for seventh place on the overnight leaderboard.
Much further down the chip counts you find Irish star Daragh Davey with 39,600 chips. Davey is an incredible poker player who has almost $1.9 million in online poker tournament cashes in addition to nearly $630,000 from live events. The Irishman has a solid record in Estonia thanks, in part, to a fourth-place finish in the 2021 edition of the Kings of Tallinn Main Event, which came with €23,810.
One player who did not reach Day 2 at the first attempt was British pro JJ Hazan. Level 4 is how far Hazan progressed. During this level, he four-bet shoved his last 7,000 chips with pocket nines, and Oyvind Kildal Stangnes called with king-queen of spades. The nines stayed ahead until the river where Stangnes hit a royal flush to send Hazan packing. After deciding not to fire another bullet, Hazan jumped into the €220 Progressive Knockout event and plans to play in the H.O.R.S.E. event on June 30, such is the massive choice to players at The Festival Tallinn.
Day 1C of the Main Event shuffles up and deals at 12:00 p.m. local time on June 30 with a turbo-structured Day 1D commencing at 8:00 p.m. local time.
