by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Feb 22, 2012 | Updated on Feb 22, 2012While attendance is still down compared to recent years at the European Poker Tour’s Copenhagen Main Event, Day 1B boasted a drastic improvement in the size of the field, and saw Denmark’s Mads Wissing amass the largest stack of the day.A total of 216 players entered EPT Copenhagen on Day 1B, making a full field of 299 players. That’s significantly down from the 449 players who participated last year – a surprising drop, as Copenhagen had routinely attracted over 400 players each of the past several years, and most EPT tournaments had retained their field sizes when compared to last year.The smaller field still created a significant prize pool. All entries and prizes are being awarded in Danish kroner, with the total pool being just over 10 million DKK (or about €1.3 million). The eventually winner will take home approximately €340,000. That’s down from a prize pool of about €2 million and a first place share of nearly €500,000 for the 2011 EPT Copenhagen Main Event.Wissing was definitely the star of Day 1B, building a stack of 127,575 chips to give him the daily chip lead by about 8,000 chips over Sebastian Rust. Wissing is primarily known as an online player, but he has had a number of notable successes in live tournaments as well. Perhaps his best result was a 25th place finish at the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event, which earned Wissing $317,161. Overall, Wissing has made over €500,000 in his live tournament career.On Wednesday, the two starting flights will combine for Day 2, as the 179 remaining players will battle for the EPT Copenhagen Main Event crown. Wissing’s big day has put him in third place in the overall chip count standings, behind only Lauri Varonen and Steve O’Dwyer, who leads all players with 190,975 chips.
