Thursday, 28th March 2024 18:14
Home / Uncategorized / EPT Snowfest: Day 1A, levels 7, 8 and 9 updates (500-1,000, 100 ante)
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1.20am: Day done
That’s it, play has finished for the night. Our chip leader right now is David Winterberger from Germany on more than 290,000. PokerStars sponsored player Julien Brecard also finished strongly on 238,100. A full wrap of today’s events will be with you shortly. We’ll try and get the full official end-of-day chips up on the chip count page as soon as it is made available to us.

1.15am: Last few hands
We’ve got five more hands to play and then players will be bagging and tagging their chips.

12.55pm Monster for Kravchenko
Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko has zoomed up to 131,000 after winning a huge hand that knocked one player out and crippled another. We caught up just as the Russian was raking in the pot after his 5♣ 6♣ made a straight on the 3♣ Jâ™  4♦ A♥ 2â™  . — SY

12.45am: Half the field down
We have ‘just’ 134 players left just passing the halfway point from the 270 starting field some 13 hours ago. Some players are looking tired, others are eating chilli. — RD

12.35am: Casey Kastle’s Chilli Power
Casey Kastle has just knocked out Jurgen Wenigwieser thanks to a bowl of chilli. The Slovenian pro claimed that there’s no way that he would have played his last few hands the same way if he hadn’t been fired up thanks to his tableside snack. — RD

12.20am: Another level down
That’s level eight out of the way. There’s now a 15-minute break and then we’re back for the last level of the day. Right now we have 152 players remaining from the 270 who started out today. — SY

12.15pm: Schmieg headed off at the river
Jens Schmieg raised to 2100 under the gun with what seemed to be a big pair and was called by Allan Andersen in the big blind. Schmieg seemed happy to bet the J♦ 10♣ 3♦ flop for 3,000 but not so happy to call Anderson’s check-raise to 13,000. Andersen bet another 10,000 on the somewhat blank 5â™  turn and Schmieg quickly threw in two yellow chips to call (looking a bit like someone with an overpair calling down two pair) but it was when a second jack arrived on the river that he really looked dismayed. It didn’t stop him calling a final 10,000 value bet though mucking his hand with disgust when Andersen showed A♥ J♥ for rivered trips. Andersen is happily up to 95,000 and Schmieg down to 50,000. — RD

12.10am: Here’s confidence for you
Daniel Negreanu just Tweeted news of his improving fortunes… “63,700 after lvl 8 just playing uber uber good poker in every aspect. Expecting another deep run.” — SY

12.05am: Negreanu’s table a cagey one
Daniel Negreanu’s table seems to have tightened up over the last level or two. The night is drawing in and some players are getting tired and just aiming to make the end of the day. Negreanu checks a four diamond board down showing top pair to scoop the pot while Casper Toft takes another pot down preflop revealing the A♣ to anyone awake up to see it. Negreanu and Toft may be able to collect a lot of chips in the last level of the day. — RD

12am: Through 200,000
The race to 200,000 has been won by Bernhard Perner, who has at least 215,000 now. His stack is worth the most but he doesn’t have the most chips. That accolade surely belongs to Joram Voelklein, who has nine towers of at least 50 chips apiece. The problem for Voelklein is that four of those are of green 25 denomination chips, four are of black 100 denomination chips and one is a stack of purples. He only has one individual red 1,000 chip, and five yellow chips of 5,000 each. — HS

11.45pm: And then there was one
We’re a De Meulder twin down – but it’s Matthias not Christophe who has taken the walk, despite the former’s relative prosperity compared with the latter throughout the day.

But Matthias got all his chips in the middle with pocket sevens and was called by Josip Corluka’s A-K. That was a flip, won by the big slick, which turned into a wheel on the 2-3-4-5 board. Matthias went over to his brother to find that Christophe now has about 28,000-ish. Corluka, on the other hand, has about 145,000.– HS

11.40pm: Arnaud Mattern…
… talks to our video team. Find out what the Team PokerStars Pro from France had to say for himself by clicking on the little white triangle below.

11.35pm: Brecard rakes in another
Julien Brecard continues his great start to EPT Snowfest, this time making a smart call of an all-in shove from a young Scandinavian. The all in player had 9♦ 10♦ , Brecard A♦ J♣ and nothing dramatic happened on the dry board. With that 50,000 all in now in his hands, Brecard is up to 147,000. — SY

11.30pm: Sarwer out
No news yet of how it happened, but a little bird (in the shape of a Finnish blogger) tells us Canadian Jeff Sarwer is out of EPT Snowfest. — SY

11.25pm: The young Finn keeps on swinging
We picked out his aggression early on today but Joni Jouhkimainen keeps on upping the ante. We just caught him setting a poor unforunate all-in on the river of a 6♣ J♣ K♠ 10♥ 3♥ board and then smirking when his opponent folded.

11.15pm: No more Nedellec
Our quota of French women in today’s field has just been reduced from one to none with the news that Marion Nedellec is out.

Her last 7,000-odd were all in with K-J against Stijn Hebben’s ace-eight. There were no minor outdraws and Nedellec was sent to the rail.

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Marion Nedellec

Julien Brecard remains on that table, and he still has comfortably more than 110,000. — HS

11.10pm: The Alexio and Arneau show
Konstantinos Alexiou raises from early position and the entire table folds before he flashes Jacks to the table. At the far end of the table Arnaud Mattern couldn’t see what the cards were and was told that they were Jacks. He then tried to remind the dealer that if cards are shown the whole table has to see them cue so language-confusion and Alexiou telling the table he was showing just because they were ‘the best hands I’ve had all night.’ ‘So you’ve been bluffing all night?’ joked his neighbour at which point Alexiou started back-pedalling at a rate of knots. — RD

10.55pm: ‘I hope you have ace king’
This was Jesper Hougaard who re-raised all in and got a call from a short-stack player, who duly showed Aâ™  K♣ . Hougaard had pocket nines, and although a king came on the flop, so did a nine, and we’re another man down. Hougaard has around 35,000. — SY

10.50pm: Checking it down
Arnaud Mattern re-raised pre-flop to 2,400 and gots two callers. All three then check down the 8â™  4♦ 7â™  flop, the 2â™  turn and the 2♣ river. Matter showed A♣ K♥ and that was good enough to win the pot. — SY

10.45pm: Thorsson chipping through the lethargy
There are a lot of factors combining to make this day 1A seem like a very long one, both for players and staff. There are obvious the after-effects of last night’s party to cope with, and a few bruises from the slopes, but the tournament room is also pretty hot today, with a lot of yawning going on. It’s about as lethargic as high stakes poker can get at the moment, with remarkably few bloodbath hands, which usually characterise such events.

Still, the experienced players will not allow such trivialities to get them down – and despite only being about 12 months old, Kristoffer Thorsson is one of those greatly experienced poker toddler talents.

Thorsson is up to about 125,000 now, most recently pinching a small pot with a well timed check-raise on a 7♦ 8♣ 7♣ . Thorsson’s opponent was tempted to fire 2,100 at that, but Thorsson made it 5,200 total and took it.

Anything above 100,000 is a pretty good stack at this stage. — HS

The mention of last night’s party means this would seem an ideal stage to put up a video of it…

10.35pm: Bad for Barnes
Dave Barnes has obviously had enough of Lauri Pesonen’s constant aggression and although the will was there the timing certainly wasn’t. Pesonen raises to 1,600 from the hijack and is called by Barnes in the big blind who decides to check-raise Finn’s 2,150 bet on the 10â™  3♣ 10♦ flop to 7,150. Pesonen moves all-in and Barnes calls the additional 4,000. Barnes shows A♦ Kâ™  and Pesonen the almost unbeatable Aâ™  10♥ . Bad news for Barnes. Pessonen is back up to 26,000. — RD

10.20pm: Six betting with air
This hand actually happened at the end of the last level, but Finland’s finest tournament reporter Vesa Arhipoff just filled us in on it as level seven began. He was quite breathless, so he was. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a six bet with air,” Arhipoff said. “A five bet is pretty standard, but never a six bet.”

After an innocuous raise to 1,000 from mid position, Joni Jouhkimainen three-bet, making it 3,425. Mike Gorodinsky felt that he too wanted a piece, and four bet to 8,050 from the cut off.

The original raiser got out the way, but Jouhkimainen five-bet to 19,800. Gorodinsky didn’t think for long before moving all in for 65,000 (approx). Arhipoff was practically panting by this point of the storytelling, but there was more dramatics to come.

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Joni Jouhkimainen

Gorodinsky showed 7♣ 4♣ for that six-bet with air. Jouhkimainen apparently confessed to Arhipoff that he had folded nine high. So he couldn’t really complain either. — HS

9.55pm: Level seven
After another quick break, we’re now entering level seven with about 185 players left. The Austrian player Bernhard Perner is very happy at the moment, sitting with what could be a chip-leading amount of 145,000.

His closest challengers include, still, Alex Kuzmin and Julien Brecard. Each of those has about 125,000.

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Julien Brecard

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