One of the new stops on Season Six of the European Poker Tour (EPT) was a November jaunt to Vilamoura, Portugal. The tournament, which got underway on November 17th, drew 322 runners, making it the third largest EPT event of the season so far.
A number of familiar faces made the trip to Portugal, including Team PokerStars players Chad Brown, Jason Mercier, and Katja Thater, as well as Shaun Deeb, Jason Lavallee, Andy Black, Ludovic Lacay, and Ross Boatman. The event featured a €5,000 + €300 buy-in and promises a first place prize of €404,793, or roughly $600,000. The Vilamoura stop is one of several new destinations on the EPT circuit and it has already outperformed one of the other additions to the tour, the August event in Kiev.
The final table is set to play out on Sunday and, at time of writing, there are still four eliminations to go on Saturday before play ends for the day. Friday’s Day 3 proved to be a short one, as the field began with 69 players and stopped a little early once it was trimmed to 24. Typically, play slows as the field nears the money bubble, with tables going hand-for-hand to avoid stalling. At the Vilamoura event, play did not even make it to hand-for hand before Sergey Lebedev was knocked out in 49th place to burst the bubble.
Those who survived to Day 4 on Saturday included chip leader Anthony Lellouche, Team PokerStars Pros Jude Ainsworth of Ireland and Ruben Visser of the Netherlands, Jim “MrBigQueso” Collopy, Ryan “HITTHEPANDA” Franklin, and seven Portugese players, including Joao Barbosa.
Lellouche began the day in a familiar role, serving as the tournament’s chip leader with over 1.1 million chips. He ended Day 2 second in chips and also logged some time as the chip leader earlier this season at the Warsaw stop. It looked as though Lellouche would be in great position to make his fourth career EPT final table, but an aggressive play early in the day found him on the rail in 20th place. After action on every street, Lellouche moved all-in on the river with the board reading J-8-2-Q-2 and Antonio Matias called, showing A-2 for rivered trips. Lellouche held just 7-9 for a busted gutshot straight draw and was eliminated.
Matias amassed a huge chip lead as a result of the hand and only built on it as Day 4 progressed. With just 12 players left, Matias holds 2.3 million chips, nearly a million more than his next closest competitor, Jeff Sarwer of Canada, who has almost 1.4 million chips. There is a wide discrepancy between these two players and the rest of the field, as Claudio Coelho is third in chips with just 750,000.
Joining Lellouche on the rail today were Collopy, Barbosa, Visser, and Ainsworth. The back-to-back eliminations of Visser and Ainsworth in 13th and 12th places, respectively, means there will be no PokerStars pros appearing at the Vilamoura final table, although PokerStars online qualifiers Santiago Terrazas and Pierre Neuville are still in contention for the title.
Play in Vilamoura will continue until the final eight-handed table is set. Players will then have the night off before returning at 12:00pm local time to play down to the newest EPT champion.
