By James Potter and Eliot James

Day 1A of the Pokerstars.net APPT SkyCity Auckland Festival of Poker has come to a close after playing a friendly seven levels. After a great day of poker we have 59 players left out of the 168 that started the day. After starting with 10k stacks, the average now is just a shade over 28,000.

The most notable early departure was Emad Tahtouh who unfortunately never got started. The other big name player to go was Team PokerStars Pro Greg Raymer who was knocked out in one of the last few hands of the day when he pushed his small stack in with 10-10 but ran into J-J.

Much of the cream certainly rose to the top with sponsored players Celina Lin and Tony Hachem making it through. Local Simon Davis finished the day strongly with 33,000 chips. Australian Peter Aristidou with nearly 50,000 in chips will also be well in the hunt on Day 2.

At this point they will all be chasing Nathanael Seet from Singapore who has around 80,000 most of which he got late in the day.

Nathanael Seet, more than comfortable behind his stack of chips

The poker was especially hot all day and special mention to Eric Assadourian who won the Pot Limit Omaha event and has now played three PLO tournaments in New Zealand for three wins. His dad also made it through Day 1A so it has been a good day for the family.

Peter Aristidou, Eric Assadourian, and Tony Hachem moments after Eric won himself another PLO title

Tomorrow Eric makes it onto the felt for the Main Event, along with fellow PokerStars Sponsored player Grant Levy and Team PokerStars Pros Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson. We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow for Day 1B at 12:15pm NZ time!