Gendvilis Leads OlyBet Riga Showdown Voodoo Bounty Main Event Heading Into Day 2

The focus on Thursday at the inaugural OlyBet Showdown Riga Voodoo Bounty was entirely on the €350 Main Event Mystery Bounty at the luxurious Olympic Voodoo Casino, located in the heart of the Latvian capital of Riga, with players battling in the final two of three opening flights.

Day 1b attracted another 81 entries, with Day 1c adding 83 more entries to bring the field already up to 250 entries to exceed the expectations of the organizers with late registration still open for the first three blind levels of Friday’s penultimate day of this prestigious three-day event.

A total of 119 players will unbag their chips, including 35 players advancing through yesterday’s Day 1b, with another 44 players punching their Day 2 ticket through Day 1c.

Lithuania’s Edgaras Gendvilis unseeded Mihails Noviks to take the overall chip lead after bagging the largest stack on Day 1b with 187,500. He was followed by Latvia’s Benjamin Fonarjov (130,500) and Finland’s fan favorite Anne Bezdek (126,000). Bezdek had less than a starting stack before the final hand of the day. There were already three players all-in in front of her when she looked down at aces and called off her stack. The player behind her also called, and her aces held against kings, ace-queen, jack-ten suited, and ten-eight suited to push Bezdek near the top of the leaderboard.

Meanwhile, another Lithuanian in Alvaras Kerauskas bagged the Day 1c chip lead with 161,000 and will start Day 2 just behind Gendvilis. Check out the top ten chip counts for when the action resumes at 1 p.m. below:

Day 7 (Friday, September 20) Schedule

As mentioned, Day 2 will kick off its action at 1 p.m., and late registration closes after the first break at approximately 3:20 p.m. Blinds will continue to increase every 40 minutes with the action concluding when the field is down to 15 percent. Mystery bounties will be opened only on the final day on Saturday with players starting the day already in the money.

The good news for those interested in something else is that the side events are back in full force on Friday. The two-day €250 NLH DeepStack Progressive Bounty begins at 5 p.m.

Players looking to have more cards to start the action will enjoy the €150 PLO4 / PLO5 at 8 p.m., while players will enjoy Friday evening with a fun €80 NLH Friday Night Turbo taking place at 10 p.m. with a 15,000 starting stack and 10-minute blind levels.