Thursday, 28th March 2024 20:10
Home / Uncategorized / EPT Barcelona: Into the unknowns

When out scouring the tournament floor for something to report the tendency is to drift towards the recognisable, the bigger names you’ve seen and talked to before. But this is a new season, it’s time to embrace the spirit of adventure and head off to find a lesser known bunch. These are the guys you’ve never heard of, the guys you’ve never seen before, the guys who have to write their name in your notebook themselves because you can’t spell Vihakas. These are the unknowns of table 18.

It’s not a straightforward place, with several languages spoken and not one spoken by more than two players. The dealer tries to explain what’s going on, doing his best, but the words don’t work. He starts holding up his fingers instead and then uses hand gestures before trying again with words, just saying them louder this time:

“Three, three!” says someone.

“No, no, no!” says someone else.

“Yes, yes, yes!” says another.

That got the blinds sorted, now on to the hand…

William Reynolds started by making it 1,800 from the button. Having said unknowns you’re never far from someone with connections and here that man is Reynolds, who you might remember finished fourth in San Remo last season, collecting €377,000. Ivan Barbouto in the small blind looked at his cards and then re-raised, 4,600 total, forcing Reynolds out. Barbouto showed him two jacks.

Barbouto has never pinged the EPT radar before, something that could also be said for Vlad Vosilerai in seat nine. Vosilerai, a big guy with grey hair and an open neck shirt revealing chains and crosses, has been getting busy, up to 43,000. Tapio Vihakas, a young guy from Finland, made it 4,000, holding up four fingers to avoid any accounting errors. Vosilerai then re-raised, 11,000 to end the hand. He was at it again soon after but Pierre Neuville, on 13,500, from the brilliantly named town of Knokke-Heist in Belgium, gave him a taste of his own medicine, re-raising to push Vosilerai out. Neuville has previous himself, finishing ninth in the same EPT San Remo event as Reynolds.

EPTs usually finish with a few new faces on the final table; we’re simply trying to spot them now; table 18 could produce the next EPT champ. You heard about the ones we have the names of here first.

Finally, you’ll find below someone else we had not met before – young PokerStars qualifier David Robinson from North Carolina, who built himself quite a nice stack, much of it from a monster confrontation with Team PokerStars Pro Johnny Lodden. Here he tells all to the video blog team…


Watch EPT BARCELONA S6: David Robinson on PokerStars.tv

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