The European Poker Tour (EPT) continues its progress across the European continent, once again having a record turnout for the most recent stop in Vilamoura, Portugal.
In its second stop at the Casino Vilamoura on the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean, 384 runners put up the €5,300 buy-in to contest, the latest championship of the EPT’s seventh season. The numbers vastly outpaced the 322 players who showed up in 2009, when Antonio Matias captured the inaugural title. A number of Team PokerStars pros and other top poker players were in attendance for the tournament, making the going difficult for the amateurs who qualified through PokerStars or bought into the event directly.
World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner David Williams made his first ever appearance at an EPT event as a member of Team PokerStars and many other pros from the stable were also in attendance. Also making his first ever appearance in an EPT event on European soil was EPT founder John Duthie.
Other Team PokerStars Pros such as Italy’s Dario Minieri, France’s Arnaud Mattern, British players JP Kelly and Vicky Coren, and Russia’s Alex Kravchenko filled out the tables. Top players such as Victory Poker’s Antonio Esfandiari, former WSOP Europe champion Annette Obrestad, and 2010 WSOP bracelet winner James “flushy“ Dempsey were also in attendance, looking to take down the latest EPT title and the €467,835 first place prize.
Action began on Saturday with 181 players lining up for Day 1A. Leading the action at the end of the day was one of the Team PokerStars Online pros, Portugal’s Andre Coimbra, who sat with a nice Day 1A stack of 157,600. Several pros were also on the Day 1A leaderboard, including Minieri (fourth, 131,400), Esfandiari (fifth, 127,800), and Mattern (sixth, 119,200).
Day 1B on Sunday was the more active of the two Day Ones, with a sizable lineup of 203 players stepping up for battle. By the time play finished late Sunday night, Russian PokerStars qualifier Leonid Bilokur had stacked himself with 161,200 to take the overall Day One lead. The pros made their presence felt through Sam Trickett (fourth, 132,600), Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi (fifth, 132,200), and UB.com’s Brandon Cantu (sixth, 122,400).
The field came together for the first time on Day 2 with a total of 221 players surviving. Esfandiari got off to a terrible start, dropping to 40,000 in chips after riding high on Day 1A. “The Magician” was able to make some chips appear and rebounded to slightly over his Day 2 starting stack, but the same couldn’t be said for several other top professionals. Such players as EPT San Remo champion Liv Boeree, Lex Veldhuis, Mizzi, Coren, and Williams were dispatched during early action on Day 2.
According to the PokerStars blog at the midpoint of Day 2, Coimbra has added to his chip stack to sit at around 220,000, but several players have stormed past him to push him back to the middle of the Top Ten. Poland’s Grzegorz Cichocki currently holds a slim chip lead over Cantu, with Kelly and Trickett also arranged on the upper reaches of the leaderboard. Poker News Daily will bring you all the latest from the battle at the EPT Portugal, including the crowning of the champion on Thursday.
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