A quick day was pretty much certain at EPT London on Thursday. The plan was to reduce a returning field of 36 down to 16, and that kind of thing never takes too long.
The more significant matter concerned the identities of the players who would comprise the final two tables, with an all-star bonanza very much a possibility, but there always being that niggling chance of a slaughter of the heroes.
As it is, I think poker watchers are going to be delighted with how things turned out, even factoring in the departure of Mickey Petersen, Christian Favale, Sergio Aido, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, Fatima Moreira de Melo and Liv Boeree.
When we return to the Grand Connaught Rooms at noon tomorrow, the likes of Jake Cody, Kevin Killeen, Pablo Gordillo, Kevin MacPhee, Simon Deadman and Benny Spindler will be among those bidding for a place in the final. Three of them are former champions and the others surely champions elect.
Cody has the most chips among that small posse of household names, but even he is not at the very top of the counts. The Team PokerStars Pro from the United Kingdom looks up tonight at Sebastian Pauli, a 25-year-old from Dortmund, Germany, who has a couple of WSOP final tables to his name, but no monstrous scores in EPT Main Events.
That didn’t stop him joining Cody as one of two undisputed wrecking balls today. They accounted for seven of the eliminations between them. Cody knocked out Ladouceur, for example, (with the mighty 8♥ 4♥ ) and Pauli accounted for Boeree. Blame them for the absence of those two crowd pleasers, but also watch as they make amends with some scintillating play of their own.
The full counts heading into the penultimate day look like this:
Sebastian Pauli, Germany, 2,674,000
Jake Cody, Great Britain, 2,291,000
Raffaele Sorrentino, Italy, 1,968,000
Artur Koren, Germany, 1,865,000,
Jakub Mroczek, Poland, 1,623,000
Jonathan Bensadoun, France, 1,465,000,
Gino Gabriel, Great Britain, 1,265,000
Joao Vieira, Portugal, 1,117,000
Pablo Gordillo, Spain, 1,077,000
Kevin Killeen, Ireland, 906,000
Yann Pineau, France, 900,000
Kevin MacPhee, United States, 869,000
Jonas Lauck, Germany, 840,000
Simon Deadman, Great Britain, 732,000
Ognyan Dimov, Belgium, 552,000
Benny Spindler, Germany, 195,000
And check out their seating assignments on the seat draw page.
Spindler will need to spin, Lauck needs luck and Deadman will be hoping to stay alive. Join us at noon tomorrow, if only for more puns of that nature. The poker should be pretty handy as well.
Follow our coverage of the EPT London festival via the main EPT London page, where there are hand-by-hand updates and chip counts in the panel at the top and feature pieces below. And, of course, you can follow it all live at EPT Live.
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