A total of 120 players made it through Day 1b at PokerStars EPT Tallinn Thursday, joining the 90 survivors from Wednesday’s Day 1a.

Serbian Perica Bukara, who currently lives in Germany, pushed into the overnight chip lead with 210,600, outpacing Day 1a leader Ali Tekintamgac.

Spanish PokerStars qualifier Santiago Terrazas, who came third at EPT Barcelona last season, is close, as is Belarussian Team PokerStars Pro Vadim Markushevski.

EPT Tallinn, the first event of the EPT’s seventh season, drew a record 420 entrants, creating a €1,596,000 prize pool. First is worth €400,000.

The tournament will run through Aug. 16 at the Swissotel in the Estonian capital.

In the meantime, the start of the new European Poker Tour season brings the announcement of a new points system for the annual EPT Awards.

The awards will now feature a revised structure that gives weight to an event’s field size.

A new award is also being introduced to reward the best Heads-Up player.

The list of awards also includes Player of the Year, Omaha POY, Mixed Games POY, Players’ Choice, Best Achievement, Best Online Qualifier and Best Country.

“It’s going to be a little harder this year because I’m better-known now and people understand how I play a bit more,” said current EPT Player of the Year Max Lykov.

“But I plan to try, and I’m going to play all the EPTs. Changing the rules to award more points depending on field size is definitely a good idea.”

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What They’re PlayingLAPT Brazil:  The most recent stop on the PokerStars-sponsored Latin American Poker Tour wrapped this week with a new champion in Florianopolis.

The third season of the PokerStars-sponsored Latin American Poker Tour was a long time in the running, as it started in November of 2009 and wasn’t scheduled to end until nearly a year later. But just before said Grand Final, one more stop was added to the tour, and that was Florianopolis, Brazil, a beautiful island town off the coast of Santa Caterina.

PokerStars is giving a shout out to all the ladies to play to win cash and event packages every month in the PokerStars Women’s Poker League! Not only is this the perfect venue for the gals to get together for some fun and poker competition, but they can make new friends with other ladies from around the world and win fabulous prizes too!With buy-ins starting from just $5.50/€5.

What They’re PlayingLAPT Brazil:  The third season of the PokerStars-sponsored Latin American Poker Tour resumed this week with its fourth stop, this time in Florianopolis, Brazil. August 5 kicked off the action at the Costao do Santinho, and there were 364 players who bought in to the LAPT Main Event for R$5,000.