There was arguably a theme to this fifth day of the EPT Dublin Main Event. It was simple. The short stacks came and went, leaving the big stacks to lay claim to a final table spot. There was just one exception to this rule, and a familiar one too. It came in the shape of Dzmitry Urbanovich, who not only bucked the trend to overturn a short stack today, he leads tonight, in style, with six players remaining.
Urbanovich has a reputation as something of a phenom, ever since he won four side event titles in a single festival some months back. From that point he never really stopped. Few players cause such a stir simply by arriving at an event, let alone for their performance in it. But to watch him today we saw something of what makes him the feared opponent that he is, with casual, almost insolent raises that seemed so natural to him, but super natural to those on the receiving end.
Dzmitry Urbanovich – 5,125,000
Patrick Clarke – 4,300,000
Kuljinder Sidhu – 3,260,000
Gilles Bernies – 2,735,000
Iliodoros Kamatakis – 1,965,000
Rhys Jones – 740,000
Urbanovich may have made others look ordinary, but their journey to the final table was anything but.
Gilles Bernies, whose heavy breathing when involved in a hand had more than one spectator worried for his health, spent much of the day out front. Had he not tangled with Urbanovich so often might have been the headline tonight. But his was a solid performance, and what’s more he looks like an EPT winner. He’ll be in contention tomorrow.
Christopher Kruk went first. An early tournament leader he endured a difficult last level yesterday which left him in a make or break situation today. It broke.
He was followed by Jiachen Gong and then Frank Williams, another early leader, and then fellow Brit Tomas MacNamara. After Matias Ruzzi and Alex Goulder departed in 12th and 11th, Adrian Mateos’s stack became vulnerable. The Spaniard, and last remaining former EPT winner, had his eyes on the final table but fell short in tenth place. That was ahead of Russian player Mikhail Petrov and Croatia’s Ivan Banic.
So sad tomorrow is the last day of #EPTDublin #festivalisover 🙁 pic.twitter.com/9g2JGfE0FK
— Dzmitry Urbanovich (@Urbanovich_Dima) February 19, 2016
All will be revealed when play resumes tomorrow.
That will be at 1pm, but we’ll be reporting on a one hour delay to allow for cards up action on EPT Live. That starts at 2pm GMT, and will broadcast every hand until we have a new EPT Dublin champion.
For now, goodnight from Dublin.
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Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.
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