After the inaugural week of action on the Global Poker League, one conference has it preseason favorite not unexpectedly sitting atop its standings with a couple of surprises in pursuit. In the other conference, a team that wasn’t heavily favored to do much in this inaugural season of the GPL has stunned many by jumping out to an early lead as some of the favorites struggle.
On the GPL Americas, the New York Rounders and manager Bryn Kenney have been able to eke out an early lead after the first week of action. After the first day of play, the Rounders were tied up with the Las Vegas Moneymakers for the top slot on the table with 10 points, the tiebreaker being that the Rounders had been able to win one of the two Six-Max matches on Tuesday. Things got a bit more interesting on Thursday as Anthony Zinno from the Moneymakers and Tom Marchese from the Rounders met in a mano y mano match to decide the first week’s leader.
Marchese wasted little time in the first of three heads up games (worth three points each), taking every chip from Zinno in a brisk 21 hands. Marchese would then sew up the overall match for the Rounders in the second game, although it took a bit longer at 45 hands. Zinno was able to save a little face in taking down the third game, points that may be important when it comes down to playoff time later in the season.
Here are the current standings for the GPL Americas:
| GPL AMERICAS | POINTS | WINS |
| New York Rounders | 16 | 2 |
| Las Vegas Moneymakers | 13 | |
| Montreal Nationals | 12 | 1 |
| L. A. SunSet | 9 | 1 |
| Sao Paulo Metropolitans | 7 | |
| San Francisco Rush | 6 | 1 |
Perhaps the biggest surprise out of the first week has been the performance – or, in reality, the lack thereof – of the San Francisco Rush out of the gate. Completely blanked in the Six-Max matches on Tuesday, Anton Wigg was able to craft a victory for the Rush in the heads up match on Thursday against the Montreal Nationals’ Martin Jacobson. Points won’t come easy in this league, however, and to be 10 points down to the preseason pick for the conference championship one week into the season is not a place the Rush thought they would find themselves in.
Over with the GPL Eurasia, the stunner is the team that has surged to the top of the conference and, in fact, has the overall GPL lead in points. Manager Celina Lin looks brilliant with her selections for the Hong Kong Stars as they battered their conference mates through the early action this week. In the Six-Max matches on Tuesday, Raiden Kan was able to win one of those to take the lead after the first day of action going to the heads up matches.
In the heads up match against the Moscow Wolverines on Wednesday, Lin whipped out her “wild card,” Randy ‘Nanonoko’ Lew, to take on the Wolverines’ Sergey Lebedev, a move that proved to be one of the best of the first week of action on the GPL. Over their three games (the first to be broadcast on the GPL’s Twitch channel with the players on webcams), Lew would take every one of them to score nine points for the Stars, equaling the amount they earned in the Six-Max on Tuesday. Those points would prove to be important as another team that wasn’t given much of a chance by the prognosticators in the preseason, the Paris Aviators, kept the heat on when the Aviators’ Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier defeated the Berlin Bears’ Dan ‘Jungleman’ Cates 6-3 to win their heads up fight.
| GPL EURASIA | POINTS | WINS |
| Hong Kong Stars | 18 | 2 |
| Paris Aviators | 16 | 2 |
| London Royals | 12 | 1 |
| Rome Emperors | 9 | |
| Moscow Wolverines | 5 | |
| Berlin Bears | 3 |
All you have to do is look at the bottom to see some more stunning developments in the GPL Eurasia. The Wolverines and the Bears, two teams that many thought would be clawing each other’s throats out for the conference title, are falling way behind early in the season. While this is only the first week, both teams have to be a bit disappointed with their performance.
Next week the GPL comes back with their second week of action. Led off by two Six-Max sit and gos for each conference on Tuesday (the full schedule can be found on the GPL website), the GPL Eurasia comes back on Wednesday (April 13) with this lineup of heads up matches (no players have been announced at this time):
London Royals vs. Hong Kong Stars
Paris Aviators vs. Rome Emperors
Moscow Wolverines vs. Berlin Bears
Then on Thursday (April 14), the GPL Americas will take to the virtual felt:
Sao Paulo Metropolitans vs. Montreal Nationals
San Francisco Rush vs. New York Rounders
Las Vegas Moneymakers vs. L. A. SunSet
Can the Rounders and the Stars maintain their momentum from the first week of the season? Can the Bears, the Wolverines and the Rush rebound from a less-than-stellar start? The second week of the Global Poker League will tell the tale.
