After four days of play at the Casino Barriere, Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano surged to the lead of the European Poker Tour stop in Deauville, France, with 24 players remaining.
54 players came to the felt on Saturday, looking to whittle the field down to the final three tables. Leading the pack was Samphane Phomveha with slightly more than 1.4 million in chips, while Day Two chip leader Martins Adeniya was in the Top Ten with a solid 893,000. At the start of the day, Pagano was way down the leaderboard, sitting in 36th place with only 344,000 chips, but he began his surge almost from the start of action.
Within the first level of play on Saturday, Pagano used an aggressive style to begin his assault on the leaderboard. He would take a good sized pot against Kevin Vandersmissen and Andre Corredoira to move up to over 600K in chips, then would assume the chip lead after a massive score against the start of day leader, Phomveha.
After an under the gun raise from Pagano, one player made the call and Phomveha put the squeeze play on, popping the bet to 90K. Pagano made the call and their third decided to drop his hand, allowing Pagano and Phomveha to see the rainbow A-6-7 flop. Pagano put out 125K and, after Phomveha made the call, the duo saw another Ace fall on the turn. Another bet from Pagano, this time for 325K, was called by Phomveha and they would go to the river.
On the ten river, Pagano decided to quit playing around and pushed his remaining stack to the center of the table. Deliberating for a bit, Phomveha decided to make the call and was dismayed to see Pagano turn up pocket sixes for the turned boat. All Phomveha could do was shoot his cards to the muck and a massive portion of his chips to Pagano. He would depart the tournament soon afterwards in 42nd place.
Adeniya did not have a good day either, bleeding chips through much of the early action. He would lose a great deal of his chips to Chris Brammer in a hand where Brammer was penalized for exposing his cards prior to the end of action. On the very next hand, Adeniya would push his remaining chips to the center and Heinz Kamutzki min-raised to isolate. Adeniya was never in contention with his K-7 versus Kamutzki’s pocket Queens and would be eliminated in 43rd place.
As the evening wore on, other players would step up to try to contend with Pagano. Brammer would sit out his one round penalty and still be able to accumulate more chips, ending the day’s action in eighth place with 1.262 million in chips. While he has been able to make it to the final 24, France’s Marc Inizan will have his work cut out for him on Day Five as he only holds 481,000 in chips.
When the cards fly on Sunday at noon (Deauville time), the Top Ten will look like this:
1. Luca Pagano, 3.561 million
2. Olivier Rogez, 2.668 million
3. Vadzim Kursevich, 1.815 million
4. Paul Guichard, 1.7 million
5. Andre Corredoira, 1.316 million
6. Ignat Liviu, 1.303 million
7. Christian Togsverd, 1.271 million
8. Chris Brammer, 1.262 million
9. Artem Litvinov, 1.193 million
10. Yorane Kerignard, 1.124 million
Players will not know what to expect tomorrow as, depending upon the pace of eliminations, it could be a long day. The 24 players will go until the traditional EPT final table of eight is determined. On Monday, the final table will return to determine the champion, who will take home a nice payday of €875,000.
