Year on year, tournament to tournament, records continue to tumble on the EPT. Just when you think there are no new grounds to tread, new ground is found. Today another tournament record was broken; an EPT High Roller event attracted three figures for the first time. 113 players including Monte Carlo millionaires and poker millionaires stumped-up €25,000 each to create a whopping prize-pool of €2,825,000 and a cool €1,000,000 for first.
The thought of coming to Monte Carlo is very attractive and initially the grandeur and wealth to be seen in the form of luxury cars and boats is seductive. Throughout the week though the mood changes and players start busting from tournaments and suddenly players start to ignore the spend lure around them and begrudge paying €20 for a cheeseburger or €12 for a beer. It was most surprising then when 113 of these players managed to put these qualms aside to find the €25,000 needed to enter today.
It’s no surprise to tell you that today’s field was chocker block full of the best poker talent this planet has to offer. Every table was a table of death. By the end of 11 fraught levels action 41 players were left standing and Tobias Reinkemeier had navigated his way to the summit with massive 457,300 stack. The chasing pack include Luke Schwartz with 300,500, Antoine Saout with 224,600 and Tom Marchese with 261,000. Team PokerStars Pros still hanging are ElkY on 196,500, William Thorson on 79,900, Leo Fernandez on 173,500, Rino Matthis on 148,600 and Chad Brown on 55,000. In the pack but definitely not to be counted out are Sorel Mizzi on 260,400, Anthony Lellouche on 136,200 and Markus Golser on 291,000.
There was a lot of attention surrounding Viktor Blom today and he managed to build a six-figure stack with ease. His reputation as an aggressive player preceeded him and he always seemed to have it when players bluffed into him or tried to pick him off. Unfortunately he picked the wrong player to try his most adventurous bluff on and lost most of his stack to Tobias Reinkemeier. After a five minute tank the German made the right call and never looked back from that point on. Blom would ultimately bust as did many of the other early pace setters such as John Duthie, Mike McDonald and Dario Mineri.
Tony G and November Niner Antoine Saout also got off to a fine starts but they managed to ride that wave all the way to the end bagging up 168,500 and 224,600 respectively. Later bloomers included Luke Schwartz, Allen Bari and Tom Marchese, who after slow starts set themselves up well for Day 2.
Vanessa Roussa, Jason Mercier, Humerto Brenes and Daniel Neagreanu were amongst the 17 Team PokerStars Pros who turned out but fell. Team PokerStars SportStar Boris Becker also played but busted when his two-pair ran into a bigger two-pair. Erik Seidel, Phil Laak, PCA High Roller Champion Will Reynolds, John Juanda and Nick Shulman fresh from his 18th place finish in the Main Event were other notable casualties.
Play will resume at 12 noon CET tomorrow and our final 41 players will fight it out all the way down to the the final table of eight. To catch-up on all the action today please follow the links below. Full overnight the counts are available on our chip count page here.
Levels1&2
Levels 3&4
Levels 5&6
Levels 7,8&9
