An hour or so ago Dan Smith was waiting in a long line to register for the €10k High Roller event which got underway this afternoon with the promise of an enormous field (so what’s new at this EPT100 festival?). About 12 hours earlier he’d been in an admittedly shorter line to get paid for his latest performance, one worth €159,500 and collected after winning the €2k hold’em event in the early hours of this morning.

Smith, 25, has previous here in Barcelona. Two seasons ago he kicked off the season with a win in the Super High Roller event, worth €962,925. But his results stem from around the world, with a list of wins now too long to remember without a Mob search, all adding up to nearly $9 million (ahead now of Johnny Chan). Smith seems to win something big every year. So his victory last night surprised nobody.

Dan Smith in action in the Super High Roller last week

But it was hardly a walk in the park, or on the beach, for the New Jersey resident. He faced some formidable opponents , not least at the final table, which included Brazilian pro Joao Simao (who had led for much of the tournament), EPT Vilamoura champion Toby Lewis, and EPT Copenhagen winner Anton Wigg, who was hot off the back of winning the €2k pot-limit Omaha turbo side event a few days ago..

Smith now plays on, this time in the High Roller, which concludes with a final table on Wednesday.

Elsewhere there was a win–finally–for Henrik Hecklen in the record breaking €2k Estrellas High Roller event.

With an all-time high in the tour’s High Roller of 802 entrants, the levels piled up, and the action was paused on Friday with five players remaining, making way for the Main Event. So it wasn’t until 10pm last night that things resumed with Hecklen holding the chip lead. He defeated Santiago Nadal heads-up to the first prize of €293,000. It’s been a good summer for the 23-year-old, comes off two WSOP final tables. He also bagged a PokerStars Sunday 500 title earlier this year.

The side event action has featured several big names. Catch up on all the results, with links through to relevant reports, on our side events page.

Follow all the action from the tournament floor on the main EPT Barcelona page. There’s hand-by-hand coverage in the panel at the top, including chip counts, and feature pieces below. There’s also EPTLive, which is streaming action from Day 4 of the Main Event.

Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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