Sunday, while 40 millions of voters were anxiously waiting for the results of the Presidential race, the biggest poker tournament in France started of the most beautiful avenue in the world, the Champs-Elysées. 68 players gathered at the Aviation Club de France for the first starting of the Grand Prix de Paris, with a €10,000 euro buy-in. As we know, the World Poker Tour camera crews won't be there this year to shoot the event, mais it did not stopped the players who answered the call and shown up at the most prestigious European cardroom to play in the event.

The tournament started at 4pm., with an exceptionnal structure : 20,000 in chips to start with, 25/50 blinds and 90 minute rounds. However, the first elimination happened only minutes after the play started. Rayad Aroud had pushed all his chips in the middle with pocket Aces on a 422 flop. His opponent called with pocket Queens, and when the turn and the river blanked, it was all over for him twenty minutes after the tournament director shouted « Shuffle up and deal ! »

Eliminations followed at a cool pace during the rest of the day, and after 5 levels, the tournament director stopped the play at around 2.30am. 40 players out of 68 had survived Day 1, the first of many to come.

Among the survivors, Marc Goodwin, « Mr Cool » himself. The Englishman had built an impressive stack, but when his pocket Kings ran into pocket Aces and failed to improve in a 70,000 pot, he was crippled down to 4,000. Not the one to give up easily, Goodwin fought back and ended the day with 20,000, good enough to advance to Day 2.

Russian players were in full force at the Grand Prix de Paris, and several of them trusted the first places at the leaderboard. Among them, the ever dangerous Alexander Kurzmin with 64,000 in chips, and Nicolas Evdakov with 70,000.

Day 1A's chip-leader is a Frenchman, Rayad Aroud. After doubling up with Aces very early in the day, Rayad kept increasing his stack steadily, and ended on top of the ladder with 72,000 in chips.

Among the other Frenchmen who will advance to Day 2 are tournament circuit regular Paul Testud with 43,000, Gilbert Chahine (61 000), Daniel Donadebian (22 000), Pascal Barrau (21 000), Elie Marciano (6 000) and Antoine Nouel (47 550).

They also made it trough Day 1A : Mads Anderson from Danmark (14 000), John Kabbaj from England (35 000), Dave Coclough from Wales (21 925), Brad Lipson from USA (29  725) and Jeff Lisandro from Australia (35 000)

Eliminated yesterday : Jonas Molander, Jani Sointula, Samir Rahal, Farid Meraghni, Xavier Laszcz, Antony Lellouche, Tony Cascarino, and Maurice Atlani.

Today, new players will show up at the Aviation Club de France at 4pm for the second leg of Day 1. As yesterday, they will start with 20,000 in chips and will play for five 90 minute levels. In attendance are expected some big American names like David Oppenheim, Jason Lester, Freddy Deeb and John Hennigan. On Tuesday, all the remaining players from Day1 A and B will be reunited under the same roof. Stay tuned on upperclasspoker.com for more news about how action unfolded in Paris.