The European Poker Tour is penning the final chapters to their Season 12 book on the shores of the Mediterranean, Monte Carlo to be exact. The final table has been determined for the Grand Final Main Event, while there are 12 contenders still in the fight for the €25,000 High Roller tournament.
EPT Grand Final Main Event
28 players came back to the felt in Monaco on Thursday afternoon, looking to either get down to the final six players for the tournament or play through six, 90-minute levels of action, whichever came first. France’s Adrien Allain was at the helm of the field for the start of play with his 3.9 million in chips, but key contenders such as former EPT Player of the Year Jan Bendik (2.447 million), former World Series of Poker November Niner Antoine Saout and another Frenchman, Benjamin Pollak (1.118 million) were also in the mix. Two dangerous players lurked at the bottom of the table, Dario Sammartino (581,000) and Vanessa Selbst (389,000), but they would have some work to do to get into contention.
Sammartino’s tried to end his day quickly with his high risk style, but it wasn’t to be. He would lose more than half his stack to Oren Rosen before doubling twice to get close to the million chip mark. The second double was especially big as, with a board reading 9-4-K-9-9, he check-called an all-in bluff out of Thi Nguyen; Nguyen’s Q-J never had anything for Sammartino’s K-5 offsuit. As Sammartino was entertaining his table Selbst, the final Team PokerStars Pro left in the field, would not be as fortunate, heading to the rail in 26th place when Mohamed Aissani’s A-9 made two pair against Selbst’s A-5 on a 4-8-4-9-K board.
As Selbst headed to the cage to collect her winnings, Sammartino’s adventures continued. Raising from the cutoff, Sammartino saw Pollak push out a three bet of 145K. When the blinds got out of the way, Sammartino looked to push Pollak off his hand with an all-in move, but he couldn’t have been happy with Pollak’s quick call. He wasn’t as Sammartino’s Q♠ J♠ was dominated by the pocket Aces of Pollak. A 6♠ 10♠ J♣ made things interesting for everyone, but the 3♦ was less than stimulating. The killer for Pollak was the Q♥ on the river, giving Sammartino a miraculous two pair and, after the chips were counted, the remainder of Pollak’s stack, sending the Frenchman to the rail in XXXX place.
Allain was quietly maintaining his lead as the day wore on and more players fell to the wayside. Erwann Pecheux, Andjelko Andrejevic and Joao Vieira would all depart over the next couple of hours and, as the dinner hour approached, Enver Abduraimov hit the rail in 10th place at the hands of Asan Umarov (in a classic race, Abduraimov’s Big Slick versus Umarov’s pocket Queens) to bring the final nine men to the table together. After some dinner, they came back to see that Jimmy Guerrero had moved in front of Allain, while Bendik and Sammartino lurked in the middle of the pack.
Pierre Calamusa utilized some unorthodox play all day that perplexed his opponents, but he eliminated Ben Philipps in ninth place when he actually had a hand – pocket sixes – to take up against Philipps’ K-J offsuit; when the ten-high board was complete, Philipps headed to the exit in ninth place. Although Calamusa would give some of those back to Saout a few hands later, he still held almost four million chips at the time and would ride it to the final table.
Guerrero would also get a bit fortunate. Limping in from middle position against Rosen and Bendik in the blinds, Guerrero would flop a flush and get three streets of action against Bendik (who had a royal flush draw) to crack the 10 million chip plateau. Guerrero and Allain would dominate much of the play in the lead-up to the final table as Sammartino was dismissed in eighth place and, as the final elimination of the night, Saout would fall at the hands of Allain when his pocket fives failed to find any help against Allain’s pocket Jacks.
1. Adrien Allain, 11.815 million
2. Jimmy Guerrero, 11.48 million
3. Jan Bendik, 2.625 million
4. Oren Rosen, 2.315 million
5. Asan Umarov, 2.235 million
5. (tie) Pierre Calamusa, 2.235 million
The final table of the EPT Grand Final Main Event will be played at 2PM Monte Carlo time (8AM Eastern Time) and will be streamed live. The minimum any of these six men will walk out of the Monte Carlo Casino with is €170,950, but the champion will take home the honor of being the EPT Grand Final victor and €961,800.
€25,000 High Roller – Day 2
231 entries were received for the €25,000 High Roller on Wednesday and, for Day 2 on Thursday, 95 players remained with former EPT champion Niall Farrell atop the table with his 311,200 in chips. The 231 entries set a record for the event, topping last year’s 215 entries that were received for the tournament, and guaranteed an outstanding prize pool for the 31 players who would earn a cash. In fact, the tournament’s top prize of €1,197,000 dwarfs what the winner of the Grand Final Main Event will receive.
There was quite a bit of work before the money would even be in sight and some of the lower stacked players looked to either rebuild their stacks or get out of the tournament and onto more enjoyable pursuits in Monte Carlo. Such players as Erik Seidel, Adrian Mateos, Mohsin Charania, Dzmitry Urbanovich and Stephen Chidwick were all gone well before dinnertime. After the break, the players came back to a new leader, 2015 WSOP November Niner Zvi Stern, and the popping of the money bubble when Ami Barer’s pocket tens were vanquished by Julian Stuer’s A-Q in a race.
After Barer’s departure, the parade to the cashout cage began. Some of the players picking up some spending cash from the High Roller tournament include Global Poker Index World #1 player Steve O’Dwyer, Vladimir Troyanovsky, Ivan Luca, Amit Makhija, Dan Smith, Daniel Negreanu and Farrell. It wasn’t until the departure of Byron Kaverman in 13th place that EPT officials decided to call it a night with 12 players remaining in the tournament.
1. Zvi Stern, 1.638 million
2. Max Silver, 1.342 million
3. Alexandros Kolonias, 1.338 million
4. Alexandru Papazian, 1.231 million
5. Ivan Deyra, 1.16 million
6. Rafael Da Silva Moraes, 1.026 million
7. Eddy Maksoud, 907,000
8. Imad Derwiche, 840,000
9. Anthony Zinno, 816,000
10. Saar Wilf, 509,000
11. Thomas Miller, 383,000
12. Ramin Hajiyev, 366,000
The High Roller tournament will reconvene at 12:30PM local time tomorrow (6:30AM Eastern Time) and will play out until there is only one. The High Roller event and the final table of the EPT Grand Final Main Event will put the finale on what has been another outstanding season on the European Poker Tour.
