Although they technically opened up a few days ago, the European Poker Tour will officially throw open the gates on its Season Nine schedule tomorrow as the first of its Main Event tournaments plays out in Barcelona, Spain, at the Casino de Barcelona.
The reason there’s a “technically” in that first paragraph is one of the changes that has come around for the Season Nine schedule of the EPT. In the past, the EPT has simply slid into town, run their Main Event tournament and then moved onto the next port of call. This year, the EPT streamlined their schedule to only eight tournaments (at this time), but each one will have more of a “poker festival” atmosphere than in years past, extending over nearly two weeks rather than just a few days.
The EPT Barcelona actually kicked off on Monday with satellite tournaments for the Estrella Poker Tour, the regional tour sponsored by EPT sponsor PokerStars and another feature at each stop on this year’s EPT schedule (the teaming with the regional tour). The Estrella Poker Tour’s Main Event picked up on Wednesday, drawing in a monster field of 1036 players that built a prize pool of over €1 million and is working to a champion as we speak.
One of the other things that have become a staple of the EPT stops is their “High Roller” events, and there is one at this year’s Barcelona stop. This tournament began yesterday and the players seemed to have no problem shelling out the €50,000 for a shot at the top prize. In fact, the rebuy event had several people firing additional bullets; of the 52 players who actually came to the chairs on Friday, there were actually 64 entries made.
As action heads into Day Two of the EPT Barcelona High Roller, Steve O’Dwyer has jumped out to a huge lead. His 1.2 million-plus in chips vastly outpaces Erik Seidel, who could only come up with slightly more than 738K for his Day One play. There are a slew of top names on the leaderboard, including Mike “SirWatts” Watson, John Juanda and Tobias Reinkemeier, and it is expected that a final table will be decided by the end of tonight’s play.
The final eight players left in the tournament will divvy up the €3.072 million prize pool, with the eventual champion taking down the lion’s share of €1.075 million.
But that brings us to the “big show,” the first Main Event championship on the Season Nine schedule for the EPT. Last year’s tournament was the second on the Season Eight schedule (after the now-departed stop in Tallinn, Estonia) and was a huge success with the players. In last year’s tournament, 811 players made the trip to Barcelona and ponied up €5000 for the right to play. The final table proved to be an exciting one as a player chased history and everyone at the table chased the €850,000 first prize.
One of the more notable names on the 2011 Barcelona final table, Spain’s Raul Mestre, would depart the event in fourth place to set up a showdown between Germany’s Martin Schleich, the Ukraine’s Eugene Katchalov and Spain’s very own Dragan Kostic. Shooting to become a member of poker’s “Triple Crown” club, Katchalov would fall short after running pocket sevens into Schleich’s pocket nines and both hitting their sets on the flop.
Schleich would enter heads up play with a 2:1 chip lead over Kostic and, even though the Spanish crowd was fervently in the corner of their countryman, he couldn’t make the leap. Schleich eventually ground him down and had him dominated on the final hand of the tournament, A-9 against Kostic’s A-7, and would go on to win the championship. The €850,000 would prove to be the largest win ever for the German in his short poker career.
This year’s EPT Barcelona Main Event promises to have much the same action in store. Over Twitter, many players are talking about the start of the tournament tomorrow, how they ended the “High Roller” and will be ready to play the Main, or how they are spending the time waiting. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier stated that he would “have to ship” the Main Event following his ouster from the High Roller, while Liv Boeree was hanging at the pool waiting for the Main Event to begin tomorrow.
It promises to be an exciting tournament as the EPT returns to action – at least with its Main Event – beginning tomorrow morning (Eastern Time).
