Tournament Report: Barcelona EPT

Tue 25/Sep/07 - Sat 29/Sep/07
England,
by NoflopsHomer
Submitted on Sat, 29/09/2007 - 1:50am

The new season of the EPT was already upon us before we had even regained our breath from the Vegas-based sojourn of the WSOP. Poker players and journalists may require sleep, but it seems the many event organisers are determined to that a free weekend is a missed opportunity. But enough of the moans and groans, these are tiny negatives when compared with the huge amounts of fun that doing an update brings.

Barcelona's casino is situated less than a few hundred metres from the coast and surrounded by busy swarms of cafes, restaurants and err...MacDonalds. Speaking as someone who is pretty much stuck in the centre of the UK, I could certainly get used to a fish-based diet that these places gloriously provide, whilst Jen would live on fried calamari if she could.

Despite the reservations of a bigger buy-in, (which may still hinder the EPT tournaments early in 2008), the tournament managed over 500 entries, many coming over from the US. That WSOPE/EPT combination proving too tempting for many of them including Paul Wasicka, Greg Raymer and Johnny Chan. With the nightclub section of the casino converted into a sizeable media room, which was needed as the number of press had seemed to increase threefold, we were ready to begin.

A winner in Dublin last season, Roland De Wolfe built his chips up early until suffered one of those inescapable set over set situations knocking him right back down to his starting stack, he struggled manfully but would be out before the end of the day.

Dan Carter meanwhile, whilst not trying to entertain himself by creating funny looking chip stacks (left), was busy knocking out players, including knocking out Michael Westerlund with the stellar 6-2 off suit which hit runner-runner two pair against Ace Jack. Others who didn't make it over the first hurdle included Sorel Mizzi, Stuart Fox and Johnny Lodden, the latter suffering a nasty A-K vs A-Q exit just an hour or so before the end of the day. Chip leaders were a smattering of nationalities, top of the pack was young American Greg Dyer, whilst Mark 'The Snapper' Teltscher and Aussie Mark Vos were not far behind.

Day 1B saw the first appearance of Daniel Negreanu as a member of Team Pokerstars, briefly appearing in the media room, where he bounced around like a hamster who'd just drank six strong black coffees. Predictably, once the tournament got underway, he received high amounts of interests from the media, even more so than his fellow star, the often mono-syllabic Patrick Antonius. Also appearing today were the flamboyant Humberto Brenes, Rolf Slotboom with a visor that was stolen straight from Geordi La Forge and Jen's number one favourite player in the world since forever, Jan Sjavik.

The early leader of day 1B however, was a familiar name to those who had followed the WSOP main event, in that it was the twelve-year-old, (at least in looks) Dag Martin Mikkelsen (right) who set the pace early. Greg Raymer was out early but had a story to tell as he lost with Jacks against King Jack then Jacks against Queen Jack in consecutive hands to send the sock 'n' sandal wearer to the rail. Like the previous day though, it was another young American, Dani Stern who was holding the chip lead, futher cementing the proof that the young internet players are quickly taking over the live games too. Also amongst the top was perennial stack-destroyer, (sometimes with cards, if not then physically) Thomas Wahlroos with talented Frenchman Fabrice Soulier also in the mix.

The start of Day Two saw an early exit for the famed internet star Annette Obrestad, who raised with Kings, found Paul Wasicka pushing behind her with Eights and bizarrely Peter Tofting elected to call with his meagre Ace Ten with six people still to act. But before you could say “Huh?” both an Ace and an Eight appeared on the flop and the young Norwegian girl was gone. The TV and media crew were almost as downbeat when Daniel Negreanu lost a race with Queens against ol' faithful Big Slick and doubly so when the other huge name, Johnny Chan (left) exited stage right when his Ace-rag ran into Jacks. Luckily, for us in the poker blogging industry, the bubble was not a long one, until some poor soul was forced to be the first to be knocked out to the sounds of cheers from everyone else. Undoubtedly several people will be suffering the same again through out the course of the year.

Brits making it into the money were Michael Greco, Ian Woodley, Javed Abrahams, Mark Teltscher and Phil Starrs. The last of these was the winner of the APAT Scottish Event, this seat being his prize. Greco, however didn't think much of his chances going into the Day Three, built his chip stack into a big arrow and had registered for the €300 PLO event, proceeding over to this secondary event during each main event break. Volatile Scandie, Mohamad Kowssarie, the actual 'Fast Freddie' from THAT pot, took over the chip lead after Dag Martin Mikkelsen suffered a huge blow when he three-bet backgammon champion Sander Lylloff all-in with Ace King, Sander called with Ace Jack and spiked the knave in a gut-bursting 300k pot.

As we got down to the final couple of tables, Kowssarie suffered an implosion of sorts, giving most of his chips to Greg Dyer who almost incurred the local crowd's wrath by knocking out the last remaining Spaniard in 9th place with A-K against A-6 but consolidated his position as chip leader going into the final table, which was as follows.

Seat 1: Greg Dyer -- 1,606,000
Seat 2: Adam Junglen -- 320,000
Seat 3: Nikolaus Jedlicka -- 569,000
Seat 4: Mika Paasonen -- 924,000
Seat 5: Mark Teltscher -- 676,000
Seat 6: Sander Lylloff -- 502,000
Seat 7: Tronde Eidsvig -- 452,000
Seat 8: Patrick Bruel -- 374,000

Bruel, a popular actor around these parts, as well as an owner of a WSOP bracelet, was first to go, an ill-timed move on an Ace-high all heart board with just a pair of tens (no heart) left him drawing to just a single out against Mark Teltscher's As 9h but he still received a rapturous round of applause from many fans.

Jedlicka was next, known online as 'RealAndyBeal ', he's another of the high volume, high stakes tournament and cash game players. But he suffered to a coinflip loss when his Tens were outflopped and out-turned by Mark Teltscher's Ace Queen. No sooner had he gone, then we lost another online star, Adam Junglen, a recent Pokerstars Million winner for $200k whose rag ace turned out to be no good against Lylloff's Eights. Tronde Eidsvig and Mika Paasonen went next leaving just Teltscher, Lylloff and Dyer. Intriguingly the former two, were actually room-mates for this event and good friends away from it, and they would end up heads-up when Dyer's re-raise all-in with K-8 ran slap bang into Lylloff's Aces.

Lylloff held a 2:1 advantage in chips going into the contest but after just ten minutes, Teltscher was all-in with Kings against the Jack Ten of his opponent and looking as though he would regain the lead and maybe become the first player to ever win two EPT's. That was until, the flop and turn both brought a Jack making his good friend the champion and forcing the Englishman to take second place. The first words of the new champion were quickly captured on the excellent live feed that Pokerstars had provided when Sander Lylloff was interviewed by Kara Scott moments after the tournament had finished.

"You've just won the EPT, you must feel brilliant."
"What?"
(repeat sim.) "I was a bit lucky there."

And so he was, but it soon sunk in that he had won over €1 million Euros, or as I prefer to think of it, over 4,000 Palladium Ounces. Which is a lot of Palladium.

So to the victor, the spoils of war and still enough time for Thomas Kremser to announce that Lylloff was "from Copenhagen, Norway..." For the journalists after this event, a beer and a steak on hot brick was more than enough to satisfy us.