Prague seems to be the destination of choice for many poker tournament circuits as well as professional poker players. Just days after its last big buy in tournament for the World Poker Tour, the European Poker Tour pulled into the Golden Prague Poker Room in the Hilton Prague Hotel in the Czech Republic and the outpouring of support has been outstanding.
136 players returned to the felt on Thursday to do battle for this latest championship on the EPT circuit, with Garry Tevosov at the head of the field. Such players as Liv Boeree, Chris Moorman, Mike McDonald and Nicolas Levi also were alive for battle. There would be a group of players that wouldn’t be happy just after the start of the day, however.
With only 104 players taking home some hard earned cash from the tournament prize pool of €3.5 million, two dozen players would be going out of the Golden Prague Poker Room with nothing. This was the fate that befell two notable names, Team PokerStars Pro Johnny Lodden and Dominik Nitsche. When Eli Heath (holding an A-Q) was able to eliminate Mads Amot (with K-J) on a ten high board, the money bubble burst and the remaining players could at least be comforted by the fact they had won €7500.
Once the money bubble burst, the floodgates opened up and several notable names dropped from the event. Nicolas Chouity, Max Silver, Mike Watson, Rupert Elder, Vitaly Lunkin and Boeree all left the tournament, with Watson’s elimination particularly painful. The Canadian got his chips to the center against Alexander Nudin holding A-Q to Nudin’s A-J, but a Jack on the flop turned the tables and eliminated Watson.
While the notable names fell by the wayside, other players began their surge towards the championship.
Nicolas Levi was one of those players who rocketed up the leaderboard after the money bubble popped. In a hand against Elder and McDonald, Levi saw a flop of Q-4-3 and the three players each contributed 18,500 to the pot. On the Ace turn, both Elder and McDonald checked to Levi, who popped 37,500 into the pot. While “Timex” dropped his hand, Elder came along for the ride. On the river five, Levi would move his remaining chips to the center and Elder made the call. Levi then turned up pocket fours for the flopped set and Edler could only muck his hand.
Levi moved up to 428,000 on that hand and he would continue to climb throughout the remainder of play during the evening. He was joined by Ari Engel, Chris Moorman and Jude Ainsworth, who all steadily climbed up the board late in the night. By the end of action on Thursday, it was the Netherlands’ Patrick Renkers who would assume the lead.
Renkers got off to a nice start when his nut flush against Dany Richa’s second nut pushed his stack to the 600K mark. He then pushed his stack above the million chip mark when, holding pocket Aces, he got Torsten Otte to commit the remainder of his stack with pocket Kings. The cooler held up as no King came on the board, pushing Renkers to 1.1 million in a span of ten minutes.
Renkers would go on to bust Joe Serock and Dennis Bejedal and also would chop a huge chunk of chips from Tevosov to push his chip leading stack over the two million mark. By the time Day Three action was complete, Renkers would still be the only player over the two million mark and held almost twice the number of chips as his second place competitor.
1. Patrick Renkers, 2.423 million
2. Martin Finger, 1.289 million
3. Denys Drobyna, 1.218 million
4. Vojtech Ruzicka, 1.128 million
5. Mads Wissing, 1.059 million
6. Ari Engel, 1.053 million
7. Nicolas Levi, 948,000
8. Jude Ainsworth, 929,000
9. Ramil Boyazitov, 892,000
10. Yann Brosolo, 828,000
McDonald (740K) and Moorman (557K) are still in the mix, while former chip leader Tevosov (331K) will have some work to do.
The final 31 players will look to get to the eight handed EPT final table on Friday, with the championship of the final EPT event of the 2011 calendar year determined on Saturday.
