It seems that the European Poker Tour loves to make stops in Italy. For the third time in the past year alone, the EPT has journeyed to Italy, this time making its first ever stop in Campione, where Hungary’s Balazs Botond has emerged as the leader after Day Two.
325 of the original 570 players came back to the felt on Wednesday, ready for another grind of a day in working towards this latest EPT champion. The Italians along the rail had a countryman to cheer for as Davide Andreoni headed the leaderboard, but he faced challenges from a host of players from the Team PokerStars stable including Arnaud Mattern, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and a player who seemingly is always in the mix in an EPT tournament, Luca Pagano.
From the beginning of play on Wednesday, it seemed the cards were stacked against many of the pros in the room. Mattern had to contend with fellow pros Bryn Kenney and Heinz Kamutzki, while Kevin MacPhee was challenged with Tobias Reinkemeier and Melanie Weisner at his table. While these players battled it out, several top pros found their way to the exit on Day Two.
Three of those players – Faraz Jaka, Vadzim Kursevich and Mattern – were all eliminated while holding the same hand, Big Slick. In Jaka and Mattern’s cases, they both decided to flip against pocket pairs and failed to hit, eliminating them from the tournament. In a particularly cruel fashion, Kursevich was actually against another A-K, but it was suited and found its way into a flush by the river.
Botond was actually very quiet throughout the day as he never drew the attention of anyone in the room until he had amassed a huge stack of chips. By the end of the evening, however, he was in the crosshairs of everyone in the room as his 646,000 in chips was dwarfing former EPT champion Ronny Kaiser’s 506K stack.
The big story of the day had to be the play of former EPT champion Liv Boeree. At one point, Boeree was virtually down to the felt (15K) in chips after losing a big pot to Vamplew. The British champion refused to give in, however, and gradually began to rebuild her stack throughout the remainder of the day. By the time action was halted on Wednesday evening, Boeree had been able to recover to over 300,000 in chips and find herself just off the Top Ten.
In addition to Boeree, there are a host of pros that are in pursuit of Botond looking to either capture their first EPT championship or attempt to make history by winning their second. Falling in the latter category is Roberto Romanello, who would work his way through the Wednesday minefield to finish the day with 331,000 in chips. Doing better than Romanello are two players, Olivier Busquet (353K) and David Vamplew (412K), while veteran poker pro Ivo Donev (317K) is right behind Romanello in the Top Ten:
1. Balazs Botond, 646,000
2. Ronny Kaiser, 506,500
3. Alexander Andermatt, 436,000
4. David Vamplew, 412,900
5. Stefano Demontis, 382,400
6. Massimiliano Bellucci, 364,000
7. Olivier Busquet, 353,100
8. Roberto Romanello, 331,000
9. Ivo Donev, 317,500
10. Primoz Adamie, 307,000
Not making it through to Day Three play today were notable names such as Alex Kravchenko, Fatima de Melo, Steve O’Dwyer, Marc Inizan, Victor Ramdin, Patrik Antonius, Chris Moorman, MacPhee, Pagano and Weisner.
The 99 players remaining in the field will have to cut their number down to 88 before any money gets handed out to the players. After that, plans are for the field to be whittled down to 24 players before calling it a night. The championship will be determined on Sunday, with the victor of the EPT Campione walking away with the latest championship on the tour and a nice bankroll boost of €640,000.
