Friday, 29th March 2024 12:11
Home / Uncategorized / EPT11 Grand Final: Mid-day update, beginners luck for George Danzer

We mentioned earlier in a piece about Max Silver that there were a number of players making their EPT Super High Roller débuts today. One of those first timers is Team PokerStars Pro George Danzer.

The German isn’t exactly a novice when it comes to playing big buy-in events of course, he has for SCOOP titles to his name, two WCOOP titles and a trio of WSOP bracelets. None of those victories came in an event with a buy-in of more than $10,000 though and although he’s played the $50,000 Players Championship event, today he was sitting down to play the biggest no-limit Hold’em event of his life. Well wouldn’t you know it, like most of the poker Danzer has played over the past 12 months, it’s gone rather well. He currently sits atop the chip counts having run his stack of 250,000 all the way up to 650,000.

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So I made a full house…

He’s basically built on a start that saw him all but double up in a big hand against Ole Schemion that sent the latter to the re-buy desk. On a Q83[Jx][3x] board Danzer held pocket jacks whilst Schemion held [Q][3]. That got Danzer up to 525,000 and he’s since built steadily from there. Schemion isn’t the only one to re-buy. So far there’s been 52 unique entries and eight re-entries, with Mike McDonald (two), David Peters, Leon Tsoukernik, Phil Ivey, Scott Seiver and Steve O`Dwyer (one each) all having to dig deep for some Euros. McDonald’s pain was at least somewhat tempered by the fact that he won his first shot at this event in a €10,000 satellite last night.

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McDonald – in, out, in, out and in again

Whilst they may have faltered – at least on their first attempt – others have used the opening levels to manoeuvre themselves into a favourable position. There are a few players from the Macau poker scene in the field and one of those – Quan Zhou – currently lies second with a stack of 520,000, whilst Charles Chadha and Sam Trickett have both reached the half a million mark.

It’s a field where it’s easier to tell you the names of players you won’t have heard of but: Dan Smith (480,000), Team Pro Online’s Issac Haxton (415,000), One Drop High Roller winner Tony Gregg (402,000), WCOOP Main Event champion Fedor Holz (395,000), Phil Ivey (370,000) and Daniel Negreanu (275,000) all find themselves with their heads about water.

Whilst, Paul Newey (210,000), Philipp Gruissem (190,000), Vladimir Troyanovskiy (182,000), Martin Jacobson (160,000), Leonid Markin (146,000) and Jason Mercier (92,000) have all slipped below starting stack but with blinds at 1,500/3,000, 400 ante none of those players are exactly in the danger zone. The only player to have busted and chosen not to ere-enter is Jason Mo. Late registration is open until play begins tomorrow and indeed there’s a €10,000 Hyper Turbo satellite at 22.00 CET so Mo may well be back in at some point.

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Ivey and Negreanu – both up

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The WSOP champion has some work to do

Follow all the action from the EPT Grand Final on the main EPT Grand Final page. Follow the Super High Roller or the France Poker Series. To get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts, don’t forget to download the EPT app on either Android or IOS.

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