A decent Day 1 stack? The stats might surprise you

February 24, 2026

Events

by Howard Swains

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6 Minute Read

You can’t win a poker tournament on Day 1. It’s one of those truisms that gets wheeled out during the opening sessions of major tournaments such as the EPT Paris Main Event.

But it’s also true that you can’t win a poker tournament without eventually picking up every chip in the room. So when should you start thinking about going for the win? What qualifies as a decent start in a tournament like this?

In other words, what kind of stack should you be looking to build on Day 1 of an EPT Main Event?

As ever with poker, that’s not the kind of question that can be answered definitively. We’ve seen plenty of players build vast stacks on Day 1 and fall short of the money, just as we’ve seen numerous chip-and-a-chair recoveries from the brink of elimination to the top of the podium.

Before we take a stab at answering the question of what makes a decent Day 1 stack, let’s run through a more of the kind of truisms that poker loves so much. And then we’ll follow up with a look at some corroborating stats.

Chips and more chips

THREE TRUTHS ABOUT DAY 1

1. You can’t win on Day 1

This is obviously true. The EPT Main Event is a six-day tournament, with the champion not due to be crowned until Sunday. The statement that you can’t win on Day 1 is usually a companion to the observation that you can, however, see your chances go up in smoke in the early exchanges.

Although the EPT allows one optional re-entry these days, you cannot afford to be too casual with your chips at the beginning. In no limit hold’em, one false move can cost you everything, and with so many big blinds in play, there’s no real reason to inflate pots unnecessarily.

2. A Day 1 chip leader very rarely wins

Obviously getting a lot of chips in poker is fun, and you’d always rather have a big stack than a small one. But an early chip lead is simply no guarantee of success. Absolutely every player is an underdog to the field at pretty much every point of a tournament with more than, say, five players remaining. That very much includes a chip leader.

3. All you need is a chip and a chair.

This one is also demonstrably true. Many poker players remember the time when they were down to only one big blind, sometimes even less, and yet managed to pull off a remarkable comeback. One of the defining characteristics of the modern elite pro is their ability to navigate choppy waters with a short stack and to recover from early setbacks to eventually build a stack.

In a tournament like the EPT Main Event, the structure is slow and there are a lot of blinds in play at the start. Even what might seem to be a helplessly small stack is almost never that.

WHAT DO THE STATS TELL US?

When it comes to poker tournaments, the words of modern times’ most profound philosopher Homer Simpson come to find. Specifically, the yellow man’s great claim that you can prove anything with stats. (Reference)

It would definitely be possible to look into the archive and find examples of Day 1 high flyers going on to win the tournament. But it would be similarly possible to find examples of chip leaders busting out before the bubble.

But as we attempt to answer the question of what makes for a good Day 1 stack, let’s choose two comparable tournaments and look at what happened in them. For instance, we’ll take the last EPT Paris Main Event, in 2024, and the EPT Prague Main Event of two months ago.

BIG STACK DOESN’T GUARANTEE SUCCESS

Here in Paris in February 2024, Barny Boatman downed David Kaufman heads up to win the title. But do you know who topped the counts at the end of Day 1A and Day 1B? Of course you don’t. That’s because Eero Rantala and Gregory Fournier, for it was they, went on to end the tournament in 171st and 19th place, respectively. Both players made the money, representing a successful week. But their prizes of €11,400 and €46,050, respectively, paled in comparison with Boatman’s massive score.

There were stacks of all sizes among the EPT Paris final table players

Rantala turned his 30,000 starting stack into 299,000 on Day 1A, while Founier bagged 351,000. That’s one thing we can already predict with a degree of certainty: a Day 1 chip leader on the EPT usually gets around 300,000 chips, plus/minus 50,000.

This was also the case in Prague in December 2025, where Fabian Bartuschk’s 274,000 topped Day 1A and Dimitrios Kilintaris bagged 282,000 at the end of Day 1B. Bartuschk went on to finish 23rd for €29,400. Kilintaris busted in 70th for €14,600.

WHAT ABOUT THE EVENTUAL WINNERS?

Now, let’s look at where the eventual final table players sat after Day 1.

In Paris 2024, the eventual champion Boatman was in 89th place at the end of Day 1A, with 85,000 chips. Only the player who finished in fifth, Peter Jorgne, was in the top 15 returning to Day 2. Jorgne’s stack of 286,000 was the fourth biggest at the end of Day 1A.

By contrast, Eric Afriat, who finished the tournament in sixth (and who was chip-leading on the penultimate day) didn’t even play Day 1. He bought in at the start of Day 2 before spinning up his 30,000 to challenge.

It was a very similar story in Prague. The eventual last six players finished their respective Day 1s in anything from fifth to 160th place. Top dog was the eventual winner Matan Krakow, who had 211,500 after the first session of play. He went on to make the absolute most of it.

AVERAGING IT OUT

We are therefore no closer to answering the question of what makes a good Day 1 stack. But perhaps we could take an average?

The eventual final six at EPT Paris 2024 had an average stack of 122,250 at the end of their Day 1s. (Afriat is here given the 30,000 he started with on Day 2.) The average for the eventual final six at EPT Prague 2025 was 106,666.

For both tournaments combined, the final table players finished Day 1 with 114,458.

It means somewhere between a three- and four-fold increase on a starting stack represents an on-par achievement on Day 1, if you’re intending to make the final table. But, and let’s repeat the point, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got less than that, and it doesn’t always matter if you’ve got more.

There’s this thing called variance in poker. And it makes these tournaments nothing if not unpredictable.

DATA

EPT Prague December 2025

Day 1 chip leaders

Fabian Bartuschk 274,000 – finished 23rd for €29,400
Dimitrios Kilintaris 282,000 – finished 70th for €14,600

Top six finishers

Matan Krakow 211,500 – fifth on Day 1A
Bora Kurtulus – 112,000 – 42nd on Day 1A
Dimitrios Gkatzas – 64,000 – 160th on Day 1B
Traian Stanciu – 77,000 – 133rd on Day 1B
Paawan Bansal – 89,000 – 115th on Day 1B
Conor O’Driscoll – 86,500 – 61st on Day 1A

EPT Paris 2024

Day 1 chip leaders

Eero Rantala 299,000 – finished 171st for €11,400
Gregory Fournier 351,000 – finished 19th for €46,050

Top six finishers:

Barny Boatman 85,000 – 89th place on Day 1A
David Kaufman – 186,000 – 18th place on Day 1A
Aleks Ponakovs – 48,500 – 250th place on Day 1B
Owen Dodd – 98,000 – 77th place on Day 1A
Peter Jorgne – 286,000 – fourth place on Day 1A
Eric Afriat – Did not play, bought in at Day 2 start