The second day of play for the European Poker Tour Grand Final has concluded, short of the money bubble and with a member of the Team PokerStars Pro roster sitting atop the leaderboard.
394 runners returned to the felt in Monte Carlo on Friday with Nicolas Yunis holding onto the lead over fellow Day 1B participant Ivan Kudriavtcev. There were still some notable players in the mix among those still in the running for the prestigious EPT title, including Annette Obrestad, Phil Ivey, Justin Bonomo, Barry Greenstein and a former winner of the EPT Grand Final, Nicolas Chouity. For Yunis, there was plenty at stake; currently in fourth place in the EPT Player of the Year rankings, a strong finish in the Grand Final would push him over the top to taking that award.
From the start, the pros in the field were making their moves up the leaderboard. Jason Mercier busted Yann Brosolo to get himself back up over the starting chip stack, while EPT champion Vladimir Geshkenbein passed the 200K mark to challenge for the chip lead. Another top pro able to make some early noise was Vanessa Rousso, who started the day with only 17K in chips and was able to push that up to 68K within the first level.
For others, however, the story wasn’t so good. Sorel Mizzi was an early departure after his Big Slick couldn’t catch against an opponent’s pocket Kings. Victor Ramdin also departed the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Casino earlier than he would have liked, seeing his A-J get run down by a K-6 of diamonds that hit a runner-runner flush. Others gone by the end of the first level of play on Friday included Vanessa Selbst, Ville Wahlbeck and Kevin MacPhee.
As the action worked into the evening hours of the day’s play, there was a chance that the players would be able to work their way down to the 96 players who would earn a minimum cash for the tournament, a stunning achievement considering how many players started the day. The torrid pace of eliminations did slow down as the hour grew late, however, as the chip stacks grew and offered some buffer against all in decisions.
One of the big stories of Friday’s play was Erik Seidel, who was able to ramp up the leaderboard to finish the day in the Top Ten. Using the elimination of Marco Tommasina to push his chip stack to the 132K mark, Seidel continued to punish his opponents. He was able to get not one, but two players to commit their chip stacks to the center while they held A-Q; Seidel calmly made the call and tabled his pocket Aces to crush their hopes of winning the hand, moving north of 250K with the double knockout. By the end of the Day 2 action, Seidel had moved into the third place slot on the EPT Grand Final leaderboard.
The other big story was that of the man who would eventually take over the chip lead for Day Two, Team PokerStars Pro Max Martinez. Just prior to the start of the final level of the day, Martinez held pocket Aces and went to battle against Fabrice Soulier’s pocket Queens for a 200K+ pot. While it looked as if Soulier would be out of the tournament, lightning struck in Soulier hitting his two outer on the Q-3-4 flop. Once no Ace came on the turn or river, Martinez was down to only 65,000 in chips.
Instead of blasting his final chips to the center and heading back to his hotel room, Martinez instead began blasting players off the felt. By the end of the final level of the night, which Martinez concluded by knocking off Kudriavtcev, the Team PokerStars Pro had amassed an astounding 456,300, nearly eight times more chips than he had started the level with.
1. Max Martinez, 456,300
2. Mohsin Charania, 413,500
3. Erik Seidel, 362,200
4. Anatoly Gurtovoy, 339,100
5. Geert-Jan Potijk, 324,600
6. Vadzim Kursevich, 317,800
7. Lawrie Inman, 303,500
8. John Andress, 301,200
9. Giuseppe Pantaleo, 294,400
10. Tudor Grangure, 293,900
Other notable pros lurking off the Top Ten include Andrew Badecker, Guillaume Darcourt, Bruno Fitoussi, Sands and Obrestad.
About the only thing the players didn’t do on Friday was burst the money bubble. That will be done today when the 130 players resume battle, with the 97th place finisher in the tournament walking away with nothing but a nice trip to Monte Carlo to remember. After the money bubble pops, the players will then cast their attention to the top prize for the EPT Grand Final, a €1.5 million bounty for the eventual champion.
