Thursday, 28th March 2024 12:49
Home / Uncategorized / EPT Warsaw: Blazing Vaserfirer scorches to final table lead

There’s been a regular pattern to the end of each day at EPT Warsaw. Each night a new chip leader has bagged up their chips, usually with an overspill into a second bag, with a colossal lead, a mere dot on the horizon to the second placed player. Well today was no different. The new chip leader going into tomorrow’s final is the Ukrainian Oleksandr Vaserfirer who tonight has 1,854,000, almost double his nearest challenger, after a day full of twists and the odd bit of drama.

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Oleksandr Vaserfirer

When play began it seemed only right to forecast Jeff Sarwer to be top of the pile. The unfailingly polite Canadian brought close to a million chips to the table this afternoon but had his tournament reshaped by the biggest hand so far when pre-flop his pocket eights ran into Vaserfirer’s ace-king which paired on the flop. That pivotal hand catapulted Vaserfirer into the lead with what was once half of Sarwer’s stack.

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Jeff Sarwer

But while Sarwer never appeared the type to rue a bad hand, and despite a gradual comeback, the one time chess prodigy busted late in the day. His back to back ace-kings lost first to Alexander Debus kings then to Vasifirer’s queens. A performance most thought worthy of one last day ended in tenth place.

Here’s how the final table will line-up:

Luca Pagano, Italy, Team PokerStars Pro — 984,000
Anatoly Gurtovoy, Russia — 332,000
Oleksandr Vaserfirer, Ukraine — 1,854,000
Alexander Klimashin, Russia — 266,000
Clayton Mozdzen, Canada, PokerStars qualifier — 978,000
Ruslan Prydyk, Ukraine — 658,000
Alfio Battisti, Italy, PokerStars player — 552,000
Christophe Benzimra, France — 465,000

One name on that line-up stands out, that of Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano who yesterday captured a record 12th EPT cash and tonight set the record for a fifth EPT final table. A finish in sixth place or better tomorrow will put the Italian back at the top of the tournament leader board ahead of ElkY. He has 984,000 chips with which to do just that. But even rankings are irrelevant alongside Pagano’s pursuit of an elusive first EPT trophy.

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Luca Pagano

Familiar faces dotted the landscape this afternoon. But they could not all keep their seats a day longer.

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Shaun Deeb

PokerStars Player Shaun Deeb departed in 22nd. He was followed by the French duo of Michel Abecassis and Antony Lellouche. Vitaly Lunkin’s tournament ended today, as did the magical mystery tour of Peter Hedlund, while Finland’s Jani Sointula departed in 13th place. Check out the payout page for a full list of day four results.

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Antony Lellouche

The last eight will return tomorrow at the slightly later start time of 1pm local time to do battle for one last day until a new EPT Warsaw champion lifts aloft the winners trophy. So pick your favourite, cancel Sunday and tune in to the PokerStars Blog to follow all the action.

In the meantime refresh your general knowledge of the day at the links below:

Introduction: The last 24
Level 17 updates
Level 18 updates
Level 19 updates
Level 20 updates
Level 21 updates

If that doesn’t fill the gap then you could spend the next 19 hours or so figuring what the German and Polish blogs are on about, breaking that up with the occasional video blog over at PokerStars.tv. And if pictures say a thousand words Neil Stoddart’s photography saved us a lot of typing today.

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On the shoulder of giants, Alex Kravchenko railing his friend Oleksandr Vasifirer

Till tomorrow then. Dobranoc!

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