Day 4 Set To Start
Hello and welcome to Day 4 of the European Poker Tour Prague Main Event at the Hilton Hotel in the Czech Republic. Today will be all about the 61 remaining players, from the 1,007 runners, trying to turn a deep run into an even deeper one.
Alas for over 75% of the remaining field their Main Event run will come to an end today as the plan today is to play until just 16 players remain, or a maximum of five full levels. One player who you’d back to still be alive at that juncture is Ludovic Lacay. The Frenchman, who won EPT9 San Remo in October 2012, is the chip leader at the start of play. His stack of 1,700,000 equates to 170 big blinds and a lead of over 50 big blinds from Julian Track (1,187,000).
Two other Germans have seven-figure stacks, they are Lasell King (1.075,000) he’s making his second deep run in Prague this week after finishing 14th in the 1,315 runner Eureka Poker Tour Main Event. And Ole Schemion (1,030,000), who just seems to go deep for fun. He won over $2,000,000 in 2012 and already has over $1,300,000 in live tournament earnings this year. Second place of higher here in Prague would see him eclipse his 2012 earnings.
Back in the pack there are a number of sharks with stacks that are comfortably above average and just one big pot from being amongst the chip leaders. Ana Marquez (870,000), Stephen Chidwick (864,000) and Andrew Chen (650,000) are chief amongst them. Whilst the Czech Republic’s best hope for a home win comes in the shape of Vit Blachut (826,000).
Further back Max Silver (554,000), last year’s runner-up Sotirios Koutoupas (545,000), Ari Engel (462,000) and Eureka3 Prague champion Dimitri Holdeew (426,000) will be hoping to stick around for a while. Whilst Jonathan Roy (217,000), Sam Chartier (115,000) and Jonathan Little (112,000) will be hoping to spin short stacks into something more significant.
Cards are in the air at noon, the feature table, which you can watch on pokerstars.tv with commentary from James Hartigan, Joe Stapelton and special guests is table five, which contains Lacay, Schemion and Silver. That, like today, should be a cracker.