Pokerstars.com EPT Barcelona - Day 2 - At A Glance

[JungleCat03]

Apologies for the clock. It should actually read 800 1600 200.

As we close in on the all important latter stages, with just about 100 players left, there is some cautious play going on by many of the players, anxious not to make a mistake. I didn't witness too many contested hands as I wandered through the card room but here's some random counts and a crucial double through for one well followed american player...

First off German legend Michael Keiner is going along great guns at the moment with a nice 80k stack counted up neatly in front of him.


Also going well is American winner of the San Remo EPT Jason Mercier, who looks comfortable with a 70k stack. He is so relaxed he has time to have a laugh and a joke with his tablemates as the Jake Gyllenhall lookalike(in my eyes anyway!) cooly goes about his business.


Maz Nawab looks similarly comfortable, the UK player with a meaty 75k stack at the moment. Good show sir!


Michael Greco has ground his way almost into the last 100 players and has 19k to his name at the moment, which won't last him too long if he doesn't get a double through sometime soon...

Come on Beppe!

[Djinn]

This guy, Jens Klaning, just busted Michel Abecassis, who walked from the table, arms crossed and an expression of consternation, having had a very promising start to the day.  Klaning's hand was , and the board at the end xheart .  I am going to take a wild guess that the chips got in pre and that AK may have been the assassin of the Frenchman.  But I don't really know.  He is out though.

[JungleCat03]

The double through I promised was "Randall" Flowers!

I missed how the hand played out but joined the table with pocket Kings laid out in front of him on a board of A-A-9-2-5 and having his stack counted out so his opponent could pay him off (I'm surmising, using my all-powerful deductive skills that his opponent didn't have an ace)

It looked as though he had doubled through to roughly 60k, which sets him up nicely for another deep EPT run to mirror his efforts in San Remo, although the young gun will be looking to go better than his 10th place finish this time.

Mark has had a great year in live tournaments so far. Apart from San Remo, he only has two other lines on his Hendon Mob Database profile, but both are victories so he is clearly a man in form.

I caught his eye as he was stacking his chips and he gave me a big grin to signal how happy he was at his double up.

[Djinn]

The unstoppable Sebastian Ruthenberg adds another player's whole stack to his already near 200k... and it's Isaac Haxton, I am afraid (sorry this early picture only has his arm in HoKarlMC)



Haxton got it all in preflop with , and it looks like Ruthenberg has so many chips he would feel the loss of a flip like the bite of a gnat as he was ready to take him on with .
Flop: 
Turn:
River:

Hands were shaken.  Chips were stacked into enormous towers.


Chipped Up:

Chad Brown -- 140k



Jonas Klausen -- 190k+



Ramzi Jelassi -- 120k



Pasquale Braco -- 120k  Also proud carrier of Luis Vuitton manbag (check it out, Julian, the trend is international!)

[JungleCat03]

One of the players left in the tournament in the tournament is the russian Semen Apokorin.

It would be very easy to make jokes about Semen's first name, but we have decided against it as we feel it would leave a bad taste in the mouth...


Incidentally, we were told that one of the Spanish reporters has been accidentally mis-typing Glen Chorney's name as Glen Horney throughout the update which caused much amusement in the media room when he eventually discovered his mistake, especially as he was typing headlines like "Glen Horney Is Bigger Than Average" and "Horney Pulls It Off Again" after a successful bluff. Lolz.


Ok, the players are now on a one hour dinner break to refresh and re-charge. Hopefully we'll be able to put some chip counts up when the players come back but for now, it's time for the players and us to eat.

*************************ONE HOUR DINNER BREAK. BACK SOON**********************

[Djinn]

As the dinner break commences, Omar Shaked busts out having gotten so short that neighbour Tobias Bengtsson said, "I didn't want to look as I knew he was going to push and I didn't want to have to see 7-2 and call..." That's never a good situation, and he was heading out of the tourney area - but I have no idea if there was previously a big damaging hand or if today had been a slow dwindle. 


Absolutely not a clue how around 40k got into a pot where beat on a board of ... but Joseph Pelton was the beneficiary and Luca Giovannone the loser. 


BACK IN AN HOUR, ICE CREAM BREAK

[Djinn]

Having tried to locate full counts after the first Post Dinner Watch and failed, going to have to settle for these Notable Counts, as Counted by Pokerstars.com.  The rest of the UK players I will find in just a moment.

Jonas Klausen   Qualifier   Sweden   220000
Sebastian Ruthenberg   Sponsored   Germany   205000
Mazhar Nawab   Qualifier   Ireland   158000
Martin Nielsen   Denmark   140000
Jens Klaning   Denmark   138000
Chad Brown   Team Pro   USA   130000
Hafiz Khan   Qualifier   USA   130000
David Kruger   USA   130000
Mikael Lundell   Sweden   123000
Ramzi Jelassi   Sweden   120000
Asti Ruscalla   Italy   115000
Kasey Castle   USA   110000
Jason Mercier   PS Player   USA   108000
Marko Vainio   Finland   100000
Stevie Chidwick   Qualifier   UK   95000
Pedro Pocas   Qualifier   Portugal   94000
Steve Jelinek   Qualifier   UK   74000
Michael Keiner   Germany   73000
Voitto Rintala   Finland   70000
Michael Greco   UK   61000
Robert Mizrachi   USA   55000
Thierry Van Den Berg   Qualifier   Holland   55000
Jonas Molander   Sweden   36000
Glen Chorny   Canada   15000

   
   
   

[Djinn]

oh and tell him from me that he should sit back on those chips and nit it up like I do

Here's your man, Moorman.

From humble stack beginnings, to around 55k right now, including lots of I've-been-at-the-antes black 100 chips.




Incidentally, two minutes after taking that picture, I walked by the table again and the seat formerly occupied by Schnettler was vacant, leading me to assume at best moved and at worst Busto.

[JungleCat03]

Some may be surprised to find Albert Sapiano in the latter stages of this EPT but he's still in and doing quite nicely thanks!

Up to 135k before this hand...he called a raise preflop on the button and after his opponent checked on an board, Albert also checked...

The turn was the and now his opponent reached in and bet out 11k...he should have known what was coming really from The Honey Monster...



"I call!"

The river was the and both players checked, Albert showing pocket fives which were good whilst his opponent quickly spun his hand into the muck, shaking his head as The Honey Monster's brand of aggressive call-y poker won him yet another pot and moved him past the 150k mark!

Can anyone stop him!

[Djinn]

With 64 getting paid, it's about time that people started taking their tournament life seriously.  The odd stand-up, proper tortuous dwell, sigh of relief or despair is starting to be seen.  Here we see an example - Eduardo Fernandes standing by the table having moved in on the button over the top of an Albert Sapiano (white hair, checked shirt) raise to 8k.  He had just 16,300 in total, so while I waited, pen poised to record the cards, I was surprised to see Sapiano fiddle with his 140k or so and then pass.




Elsewhere Luca Giovannone wasn't so lucky, as he moved in on the small blind over button Maz Nawab, only to be called sharpish by the big blind whose was in great shape against Luca's , and stayed that way to bust him.  "I'm glad you called," added Maz, "Or I would have done with J-9."

[JungleCat03]

Assorted chip counts from around the arena...

Jason Mercier - 114k

The San Remo champ has been steadily accumulating and has his chips arranged in a neat pyramidal structure which I found useful as it enabled me to easily tot up his chip stack.

Snoopy however, normally so positive in his outlook, was not such a big fan.

"I wish he'd take those towers down...I mean there's no need!!" - No double thumbs up from the beagle then. Can Mercier recover from this damning indictment of his chip stacking skills?

Chad Brown - 90k

Chad lost quite a few chips after doubling through the tattoo lady, otherwise known as Sheryl Hershon, a fellow American, whose K-K held up versus Chad's big slick A-K...

She is up to 60k or so...

Michael Greco - 80k

Michael has made a sterling comeback from his shortstack and now boasts a couple of rather tall towers in his stack and is looking poised to make a big impression on this EPT.

[Djinn]

Maz Nawab now has about 165k, comfortably cruising through the day and looking good to top last year's placing.  The gent in red on the right of the pic is the busted Luca Giovannone, while the guy in green I confused briefly with a stackless Ruthenberg, but my list says he's Theodoros Aidonopoulos.  Anyone confirm?  Either way I was standing behind him in the queue to get in the casino this morning and they were taking serious issue with his tracksuit trousers.  Greg Raymer learned the hard way about shorts on Day One, but this guy wasn't giving up without a fight.  He just kept saying "I am playing in five minutes!" until they gave up and let him downstairs.

[JungleCat03]

Prize Pool Time!

Here are the giant rewards for those players who can battle through to the final 64 spots.

1 - €1,361,000
2 - €792,000
3 - €455,000
4 - €351,000
5 - €292,000
6 - €227,000
7 - €178,000
8 - €119,000

9-10 - €74,400
11-12 - €49,600
13-14 - €37,200
15-16 - €29,700
17-24 - €24,700
25-32 - €19,800
33-40 - €17,300
41-48 - €14,900
49-56 - €12,400
57-64 - €10,200

It's so exciting here as we approach the bubble. The press are milling round the playing arena like little ants scavanging pieces of information like little sugar particles before carrying them back and forth to the press room in a continuously moving column.

Who will it be!!!

[JungleCat03]

Michael Greco was lost in thought as I snapped him and seems to be a little shorter than the last time I caught him...down to 63k at this point...



As I joined Stu Rutter's table,he was on a relatively short stack of 50k, and he gave me one of his trademark cheesy grins...



More excitingly, he was quickly involved in a hand...

I saw Stu raise to 7k from late position.

However, if he was after the blinds, he was not going to find them uncontested as portuguese player Diogo Manuel Sampaio Pereira Soares Borges (yes incredibly he does somewhat greedily own ALL those 6 names) shipped his entire 60k stack into the middle.

Facing a call for his tournament, he looked uncomfortable and removed his shades to take a better look at the excessively long winded-ly named man form Portugal...

Eventually he mucked his cards before giving the man a look that suggested he was about to go off to the deed pole office to rename himself Stuart Not Going To Pass To Your Re-raise Next Time Rutter...

Here is his nemesis from that hand Diogo Manuel Sampaio......(gulp for breath)....Pereira Soares Borges.

[Djinn]

More Chip Counts, seeing as the remaining 76 players don't seem in a huge hurry to get their cards on their backs right now and bust themselves...

Steve Jelinek -- 73k
Thierry van der Berg -- 68k
Jonas Molander -- 47k
Jonas Klausen -- 230k
Maria Maceiras -- 110k
Michael Greco -- 78k
Ramzi Jelassi -- 100k
Stuart Taylor -- 32k
Stuart Rutter -- 35k
Shephen Chidwick -- 120k
Asti Ruscalla -- 118k
Henri Koivisto -- 73k
Benjamin Mirsaidi -- 110k
Ronny Johansen -- 28k
Nichlas Mattsson -- 74k
Axel Albertsson -- 80k
David Kruger -- 95k