The name might suggest otherwise, but Jose Carlos Garcia is a proud Pole who's been leaving his mark on the live tournament circuit for a little over a year now. Garcia leads the GPI rankings in Poland, but he's very likely to be overtaken soon by his good friend Dzmitry Urbanovich. We spoke to Garcia about poker in Poland and his battle with Urbanovich.
On a board of , Jose Carlos Garcia bet 38,000 from the cutoff. Ben Dobson pondered for a bit under the watchful eye of the camera crew before making the call. Garcia showed and took the pot with quads.
Between this stop and Malta, Poland's Dzmitry Urbanovich has taken the EPT by storm. Just a couple of days ago he finished runner-up to Erik Seidel in the €100,000 Super Hight Roller for a seven-figure score, and if he has his way, he's going to put in another impressive performance here in the Main Event.
In a recent hand, Ramin Hajiyev opened for 3,400 from early position and was met by a three-bet to 10,000 by Urbanovich in the cutoff. The button and blinds all folded, and then Hajiyev four-bet jammed. Urbanovich snap-called off for 43,500 total and the cards were turned on their backs.
Hajiyev:
Urbanovich:
The flop was dangerous for Urbanovich as Hajiyev picked up both straight and flush draws, but the running turn and river proved safe enough to give him the double.
We missed the preflop action, but we do know a raising war broke out between Noah Vaillancourt and Heinz Kamutzki that resulted in the latter getting his stack of 50,000 or so in the middle.
Vaillancourt:
Kamutzki:
It was a cooler for Kamutzki, and he received no reprieve as the board ran out a lackluster .
There were 564 players from 60 countries in the EPT11 Grand Final Main Event. Frenchmen dominated the field with 60 players (11%), followed by Russians (55; 10%) and the Americans (52; 9%). Check it out:
Martin Jacobson is no stranger to the EPT, but last year he made himself known to the entire poker world by winning the 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event for $10 million. Jacobson is still in his reign as champ, and he was in action here on Day 2 hoping to add an EPT title to his résumé. Unfortunately for him, those hopes just came crashing down.
Jacobson had been nursing a short stack most of the afternoon and was recently relocated to Table 18. In what was either his first or second hand, Jacobson open-shoved for 22,000 from the hijack and Nikolay Komcharokov called from the small blind.
Jacobson:
Komcharokov:
Jacobson got it in good, but he fell behind when the flop came down . Neither the turn nor river helped the Swede, and just like that the field lost one of its most accomplished players.
EPT Barcelona €10,000 High Roller (€747,200) and EPT Malta €5,000 6-max turbo (€97,400) winner Ihar Soika will not become the 2015 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino EPT Grand Final Main Event champion.
After a raise to 3,500 from middle position, PokerStars Team Pro Eugene Katchalov three-bet to 8,200 from the cutoff. Action folded to Soika in the big blind and the Belarusian shoved all in for about 30,000 from the big blind. The initial raiser quickly folded, Katchalov called as soon as he found out how much it was.
Ihar Soika:
Eugene Katchalov:
The board ran out ; not even a glimpse of hope for Soika at any point in the board development.