Live updates from day one, level seven of the EPT London High Roller event brought to you by Stephen Bartley, Howard Swains and Simon Young.
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Blinds: 400-800 (100 ante)
9.30pm: Gallery of the departed
There are a lot of fine players now in the ex-participant category.They fell in this approximate order:
9.15pm: Pagano bundled out
Luca Pagano wasn’t likely to hang around too long with his micro-stack of about 6,000. He found pocket fours, shoved, and ran into pocket tens. Ciao.
9.05pm: Coren doubles up
Team PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren doubled up, getting her A♥ Aâ™ called by Masaaki Kagawa’s A♣ K♣ . The board of 9♣ 4♦ 10♦ 3♦ J♥ brought no unfortunate dramas, and Coren soars back up to 40,000.
Kagawa, from Japan, slips right i8nto the danger zone with around 7,500 left.
8.55pm: Well I really really raise…
As Juha Helppi was stacking his new chips Andrew Feldman pointed out that something big was going on at his table. The explosive force was provided by a lot of chips. The fuse was Dario Minieri.
The pocket Italian had made it 2,100 pre-flop. Dennis Phillips had raised to 5,500. Eugene Katchalov didn’t stop at that, raising again to 13,000 before Minieri showed he wasn’t kidding by making it 31,000 in total. Phillips got the point and folded. Eventually Katchalov did the same.
Dario Minieri
“Show the bluff!” yelled Feldman at Minieri.
“You never show me yours, why should I show you mine?” he replied, the Minieri grin in place.
“You never ask.”
8.52pm: Eye of the tiger
Juha Helppi made it 6,000 pre-flop which Dave Ulliott and Michael Tureniec called for a 5â™ J♥ 5♥ flop. Tureniec checks in the small blind. Helppi and Ulliott do the same. On the 7♥ turn Tureniec bet 14,400 which Helppi called. Ulliott got out of their way. A 6♣ on the river. Tureniec took his time but made it another 28,200. Now the focus was on Helppi, who once described himself as Ivan Drago to Phil Hellmuth’s Rocky IV when he came second to Big Phil in a WSOP event some years ago. Well, (bad pun alert) Helppi was pulling no punches and re-raised Tureniec somewhere in the region of 80,000. Tureniec folded immediately, leaving himself with a little more than 10,000. “Don’t try to bluff me,” said Helppi grinning. Tureniec didn’t grin.
8.45pm: Greenstein out
Barry Greenstein came back from dinner nursing a tiny 6,000 stack. He won one nice pot, but then got his chips in the middle with Q♠Q♥ hoping for a nice double up that would get him back in some sort of decent shape. But he was insta called by A♣ K♣ , and the board of 6♥ 5♠K♥ 10♦ 2♥ sealed his fate.
8.35pm: Full
We’ve now returned from the dinner break and will play another four one-hour levels until the close. The chip leader of the 53 remaining players is still the Uruguayan Adolfo Vaeza, who has close to 300,000.
At the other end of the spectrum is Luca Pagano, who has been stuck with a short stack all afternoon. Pagano explained that that was the result of a set over set encounter within the first couple of levels. Expect his last 10,000 in the middle soon enough.
