Steve O’Dwyer paces field on Day 1a of EPT Copenhagen

One of the breakout performers in live tournament poker last year was Steve O’Dwyer. O’Dwyer has always been a serious threat in any poker tournament he entered, but at the tail-end of 2011, beginning right after the WSOP, the longtime tournament grinder made a name for himself in the mainstream poker world. And it appears that he wants to continue that run in 2012 after ending Day 1a of the EPT Copenhagen Championship as the chip-leader.

O’Dwyer ended Day 1a of the EPT Copenhagen Main Event with 190,975 chips, ahead of other notable names like Roberto Romanello and Melanie Weisner, both of whom landed in the Top 10 at the end of the day. The day began with 83 runners registering on Day 1a of the tournament and a total of 48 players made it through to Wednesday’s Day 2.

Attendance is once again down at a major tournament when you look at the year-over-year numbers: Last year a total of 449 players registered for the EPT Copenhagen Main Event, and even with tournament officials hopeful that twice as many players will show-up for Day 1b, the total attendance would still fall way short of last year’s mark.

Many people in the industry are pointing to Black Friday as the major culprit for the attendance drops at tournaments around the world (all of these events took place before Black Friday last year), and this is the first time since its inception that the European Poker Tour is having to deal with massive attendance slides.

Here is a look at the current chip-leaders from Day 1a of the tournament:

1.       Steve O’Dwyer – 190,975

2.       Lauri Varonen – 161,150

3.       Roberto Romanello – 115,475

4.       Ilkin Amirov – 105,000

5.       Niels van Alphen – 96,325

6.       Danny Neess – 95,875

7.       Albert Iversen – 94,175

8.       Dmitri Tchernykh – 90,525

9.       Melanie Weisner – 78,900

10.   Anthony Hnatow – 70,500

O’Dwyer’s good run in 2011 began with a win at the 2011 Bellagio Cup VII where he pocketed an impressive $259,452 in July. In August, O’Dwyer won the Inaugural Epic Poker League Pro/Am tournament and finished 5^th in a €10,000 NLHE event at the EPT Barcelona, adding a further $100,000 to his yearly haul. The biggest score for O’Dwyer in 2011 was his runner-up showing at the EPT London Championship in September, worth $726,790; this was followed by a final table showing at the 2011 WSOP Europe in the $3k NLHE Shootout. O’Dwyer then capped-off his 2011 tournament campaign with a runner-up finish at the WPT Venice Main Event. In all O’Dwyer earned $1,423,680 in 2011.

Day 1b will kick-off at Noon local time, so anyone who happens to be in Copenhagen, Denmark with DKK37,250, or about $6,600 burning a hole in their pocket , and nothing better to do will be more than welcome to enter the event!