The season finale for the European Poker Tour, the Grand Final, rolled along on Friday with Day 2 action in their €100,000 Super High Roller event. After firming up the prize pool with the close of late registration to start the day, the end of the night brought the final table into clear view with Iran’s Ali Reza Fatehi atop the leaderboard.
38 players returned from the 44 players who put up 56 buy-ins on Day 1 Thursday, but they would be joined by some (through late registration/rebuy) who arrived a bit late to the party. Fedor Holz, who had been a bit preoccupied with the €10,000 High Roller event on Thursday (where he finished fourth) was one of the newcomers after winning a €10K satellite into the tournament; he was joined by the third place finisher in that tournament, Sergey Lebedev, who chopped up that High Roller with eventual champion Chance Kornuth and Philipp Gruissem. With rebuys from Max Altergott, Nick Petrangelo and Timofey Kuznetsov, the final numbers came in at 61 entries, with the final eight players taking down a payday and the eventual champion earning a nice €1,775,500 for three days of work.
So the 43 runners were off for Day 2 with quite the slog before them. It didn’t seem that they had €100,000 on the line, however, as several players were looking for big doubles or a day off before the start of the Grand Final on Saturday. Lebedev was the beneficiary of one of these moves, sitting behind a small-blind Dominik Nitsche who had shoved all in when Lebedev woke up with Big Slick in the big blind. Lebedev called and he had Nitsche’s A-10 dominated; once the board ran out eight high, Nitsche had a spot on the rail with his name on it.
Nitsche wasn’t alone in viewing the action from the sidelines. Daniel Negreanu, Isaac Haxton, Fabian Quoss, Thomas Muehloecker and start-of-day chip leader Mikita Badziakouski all were early victims of the action as, once the tournament was down to the final three tables, Mustapha Kanit had moved into the lead with 1.6 million chips. After the redraw, Fatehi came out of the woodwork to challenge Kanit after his A♦ 5♦ nut flush defeated Max Silver’s K♦ Q♦ second-best flush to double up to 1.5 million.
This seemed to spark Fatehi’s aggression as he was responsible for knocking off Stanley Choi and Silver soon afterwards to move into the lead, but Kanit wasn’t so eager to give up his position. He utilized the double-knockout to take down Jason Mercier and Sean Winter to push over the two million mark and bring about another redraw with two tables left. Kanit kept the pressure up, chopping a bunch of chips from Ivan Luca, but he would slide back behind Fatehi again in doubling up Luca later on.
The duo kept the chips flying as the skies darkened on the Mediterranean coast, but Fatehi took firm command of the tournament just as the dinner bell sounded. On a K♥ Q♥ 4♣ 4♥ 3♣ board, Fatehi moved all in on Christoph Vogelsang, who agonized over the decision as many of the players stopped to watch as they headed to dinner. Although he admitted he “wasn’t strong,” Vogelsang didn’t believe Fatehi and made the call, only to his dismay see Fatehi had the goods with an A♥ 5♥ against Vogelsang’s A♦ Q♦, solidifying Vogelsang’s longer dinner break than he expected after being eliminated. The additional chips to Fatehi’s stack pushed him over the four million mark.
It was more of a factor of who would join Fatehi at the final table than whether Fatehi would have the chip lead at the end of the night. Once Ole Schemion eliminated Mike McDonald in ninth place (for no payday), the final eight men were set for Saturday’s showdown with Fatehi holding a massive chip lead.
1. Ali Reza Fatehi, 5.18 million
2. Stephen Chidwick, 2.92 million
3. Mustapha Kanit, 2.2 million
4. Ole Schemion, 1.685 million
5. Igor Kurganov, 1.23 million
6. Ivan Luca, 935,000
7. Sam Greenwood, 855,000
8. Paul Newey, 250,000
While these eight men will fight it out for the remainder of the nearly €6 million prize pool, the rest of the international poker community will prepare for Day 1A of the EPT Grand Final Main Event on Saturday. The €5000 buy-in tournament should be one of the biggest in the history of the EPT as players from around the world are in Monaco especially for the event. Defending champion Adrian Mateos is on hand to see if he can hold on to his belt as the champion, but he’ll have to fend off a field that could exceed 600 players. It makes for a busy day on Saturday as the EPT wraps up its Season 12 schedule in the ritzy confines of Monte Carlo.
