This week marks the beginning of the end of the European Poker Tour (EPT) Season 8 as the EPT Grand Final Main Event gets underway. The best players in the world are flocking to the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort in Monaco, paying €10,000 + €600 to try to follow in Ivan Freitez’s footsteps after he won last year’s Grand Final and €1,500,000. Day 1A saw 271 players hit the tables with 165 making it to Friday’s Day 2. Leading the charge is Prague’s Martin Kabrhel, who bagged 167,800 chips when play came to a close Wednesday.
This is the seventh time in eight seasons that the EPT Grand Final is being held in Monte Carlo. The one exception was last year, when Madrid, Spain hosted the season culminating event. It was a down year for the tournament, as just 686 players took part, creating a $6,860,000 prize pool. That was the lowest turnout since Season 2, when 298 runners competed in the event when the European Poker Tour was still in its infancy. The following season, attendance jumped to 706 and increased in both Seasons 4 and 5. Even though just 271 players signed up for Day 1A, the second of Day 1 flights is almost always more heavily populated, so there looks to be a good shot to eclipse last year’s field.
For his part, Kabrhel made it to the head of the pack by not limiting himself to A-B-C poker. In his words, he played a very “silly” style, landing a pot of almost 100,000 chips near the end of the night to catapult his stack to over 200,000. Obviously, he lost some chips after that, but he didn’t relinquish the lead. One interesting tidbit about the day was that Kabrhel was seated with John Eames and Freddy Deeb for much of the day, both of whom are amongst the top six chip stacks. Eames is in third place, just 10,000 chips behind Kabrhel, while Deeb is in sixth, holding 114,600 chips.
Kabrhel isn’t a household name in poker, but he has quite a successful live tournament career, earning over $1.1 million. He made a great run in late 2009, winning the €4,000 Poker EM/European Poker Championship to the tune of €190,320 in October, then the €2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event at EPT Vilamoure in November (€58,064), and finally the €2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event at EPT Prague in December (€100,000). That hot streak continued in January 2010, when he won the €20,000 High Roller event at EPT Deauville for €250,000. More recently, he won €27,300 for a first place finish in the €1,000 No-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha event at EPT Prague in December 2011.
A new batch of players will take their seats at noon local time Thursday for the start of Day 1B. The survivors will combine on Friday with the 165 who made it through Day 1A.
European Poker Tour Grand Final – End of Day 1A Chip Leaders
1. Martin Kabrhel – 167,800
2. David Sands – 160,300
3. John Eames – 157,200
4. Malte Moenni – 136,900
5. Tristan Clemencon – 121,100
6. Freddy Deeb – 114,600
7. Frank Koopmann – 113,900
8. Jason Wheeler USA – 112,900
9. Reza Mostafavi Tabatabaei – 110,900
10. Ben Warrington UK – 104,800
