Even by the brutal standards expected on the EPT, this afternoon’s cull of players has been particularly harsh.
We’re into level 12 and already we have just 46 players remaining. They’re posting blinds of 1,000 and 2,000 with a running ante of 200.
Our qualifiers have taken a hit – we’ve lost Hans David Rognlien, Daniel Elkeslassy, David Layani, Christopher Hancock, Jason Young and Jim Hagan. News has also just reached us that Simon “Suffolk Punch” Young has just completed a riches to rags story: he was moved to the television table, beside Xuyen “Bad Girl” Pham, but is now out the door. Details will surely follow.
The good news is that all these chips remain in the room, meaning many of them have found their way into the hands of some of our players. Doug Protz, who started the day with fewer than 10,000, is up to around 50,000, that Lazarus nickname just waiting to be attached. His brother Don is still in the tournament, but with just 15,000 and Ram Vaswani to contend with, he has some work to do.
Thomas Grundy has more than 70,000 and is still in with a shout, as is Markus Gonsalves, whose 65,000 is more than just respectable.
Luca Pagano’s last count was just over 50,000, but swings are surely likely. The final remaining Team PokerStars member is sandwiched between Morten Jensen’s 110,000 and Marc Naalden’s tournament-leading monster stack of approximately 270,000.
