On their way to crowning their first Main Event champion for their Season 12 schedule, the European Poker Tour stop in Barcelona, Spain, churned on with its action on Friday. By the end of the day, Peter Eichhart was on top of the final 36 with Day 3 leader Oleksii Khoroshenin lurking behind him.
110 players surged from the gate on Friday, all with visions of the more than €1.4 million first place prize dancing in their heads. Along with Khoroshenin (1.708 million) was Dmitry Yurasov, who held 1.219 million in chips himself to start the day, Rodney Ramalho (1.138 million), Denys Shafikov (1.11 million) and Diego Casco del Riego (1.091 million) rounding out the Top Five. While these men were all safe, the early hours weren’t kind to several of the top players as short stacks such as Jason Mo, Jason Les, Kimmo Kurko, Saar Wilf and Michael Eiler were all eliminated within the first two levels of the day.
One of the other notable names in the field, Patrik Antonius, started off decently before a huge misstep saw his chip stack decimated. Antonius had climbed from a short stack to hold over 600K in chips when he went to battle against Rui Sousa on a Q-4-Q board. Both players would check the Jack that fell on the turn but, when a deuce hit the river, Antonius shoved his stack to the center and was immediately called by Sousa. Antonius had an A-3 in his hand, complete air and a bad moment to make a bluff as Sousa turned up a Q-J for the nuts. After counting the chips, Sousa was determined to have been the at-risk player but not after the hand’s completion. Sousa moved on in the tournament with 1.142 million in chips while Antonius, left with only 22K, departed moments later at the hands of Matthias de Meulder.
Eichhart steadily pushed his way up the leaderboard through the early play, knocking off Eiler to push his chip stack to 1.1 million and he never went under that mark. In one of the hands during the last level of the night, Mikalai Vaskaboinikau opened up the betting and Eichhart made the call. Putting the squeeze play on, Jasper Wetermans moved all in, but couldn’t have felt great about both Vaskaboinikau and Eichhart making the call. The Q-J-Q flop was double-checked and Vaskaboinikau check-called a bet from Eichhart when a King came on the turn. When a seven filled out the board, Vaskaboinikau finally gave it up after another bet from Eichhart.
Eichhart, now with only the all-in Wetermans left, turned up his A-10 for the turned straight, but Wetermans was long gone by this point. His pocket eights were turned up as a formality as the pot was pushed to Eichhart to put him at 3.4 million chips.
When the action resumes for Day 5 on Saturday, Eichhart will have these players in pursuit of him:
1. Peter Eichhart, 4.36 million
2. Denys Shafikov, 3.995 million
3. Amir Touma, 3.845 million
4. Rainer Kempe, 2.455 million
5. Oleksii Khoroshenin, 2.325 million
6. Frederik Jensen, 2.28 million
7. Steven Warburton, 2.15 million
8. Pascal LeFrancois, 1.925 million
9. Jonas Palsgaard, 1.9 million
10. Cristinel Sandu, 1.865 million
Khoroshenin’s story is particularly interesting in that he began the final level of the night with less than 1 million in chips before powering to his end of day stack. While looking to go after Eichhart, Khoroshenin will have to look in the rearview mirror at players such as Joao Brito (1.735 million), Sousa (1.06 million) and de Meulder (840K) looking to make their own charge.
The final 36 will be whittled down to the eight-handed official EPT final table for play on Sunday. By the close of this weekend, the first Main Event champion on the Season 12 schedule for the EPT will be crowned, with said player picking up a million Euro payday for his efforts.
