Day 4 of the 100th European Poker Tour event resumes today at the Casino Barcelona with Andrei Konopelko sitting at the top of the leader board with 1,451,000 chips. The 50 year old from Belarus qualified via a €530 satellite on PokerStars and is looking to spin that up to a huge pay-day.
Piotr Sowinski from Poland bagged the second biggest stack returning with 1,315,000 and in third place is EPT Berlin champion Davidi Kitai 1,200,000.
Kitai isn’t the only former EPT winner left in the field though. Still in contention are EPT Prague champion Martin Finger (1,038,000), EPT London winner Robin Ylitalo (338,000), EPT Barcelona winner Mikalai Pobal (163,000), Mike McDonald (495,000) and EPT Tallinn winner Kevin Stani (421,000).
The last Team PokerStars Pro standing is Jan Heitmann who has 953,000
Just 102 players remain from the 1496 entrants, a record for an EPT on European soil, and they are battling it out for a huge €1,261,000 first-place prize and the prestige of being crowned a European Poker Tour Champion.
The PokerNews Live Reporting team will bring you all the news from the Main Event today including the bust outs, big hands and interviews right to the end of play. The €10,000 High Roller also kicks off at 1pm and we will bring you all the coverage from that event too. Join us as the action kicks off at Noon for another exciting day of poker.
Dominik Panka, the PCA champion, was all in preflop wih against Andrey Shatilov's . The board came and it looked like Panka was heading out of the door but the river was the and Panka doubled up.
A few hands later and Dominik Panka was betting 190,000 on the river of an board. Johan Soderberg check-raised all in for 311,000 and Panka looked pained. He took several minutes before finally calling.
Soderberg turned over and Panka flipped .
Soderberg looked shocked, "You slowrolled me?"
Panka replied, "No, of course I didn't."
Andre Leattau added, "I don't think it's a slowroll."
Team PokerStars Pro Jan Heitmann was ninth in chips coming into Day 4 after a great Day 3. He took the PokerStars Blog through his Day 3 before play started.
With Karin Bruteig already all in, Dominik Panka and Diogo Miranda got into a raising war with Miranda eventually six-betting all in and Panka snap-calling.
Bruteig:
Miranda:
Panka:
The main pot was worth around 500,000 while the side pot was almost 1.8 million. The board came , Panka let out a deep breath. He was almost out just over an hour ago and now he's one of the chip leaders.
PokerStars qualifier Bram Haenraets opened to 32,000 before Davidi Kitai made it 69,000 behind him. Haenraets four-bet to 153,000 but Kitai five-bet to 258,000. Haenraets moved in and Kitai rechecked his cards, sighed and called.
Haenraets:
Kitai:
The board came and Haenraets eliminated the former EPT Berlin champion right on the break.
In the last hand before the break, German Team PokerStars Pro Jan Heitmann got one of the biggest bad beats you can get deep into a tournament.
In a battle between the button (Mark Wagstaff), and big blind (Jan Heitmann), all the chips went in before the flop. Heitmann had the starting hand of all starting hands; . Wagstaff had and a 1.7 million pot was up for grabs.
The on the flop, and on the turn, were safe for Heitmann, but the on the river crushed his dreams of making the final table and winning this entire thing. Well, he still has some chips left, but he'll need to make one of the biggest comebacks since Pieter de Korver's one big blind recovery to win EPT Monte Carlo a couple years ago, to get that trophy.
There were 102 players returning for Day 4 of the record-breaking European Poker Tour event here in Barcelona, but after six levels and 12 long hours, just 25 remain going into the penultimate day of the first EPT of Season 11.
The chip leader to close the day was Bram Haenraets of the Netherlands, and he is remarkably playing his first-ever live tournament, but hasn't been afraid to show a lot of aggression. At one point, Haenraets was just one card and three outs away from elimination in a massive pot against Nick Rampone. Haenraets made a huge check-raise shove on the turn of a board with the , but Rampone called with the . The pot was worth over four million in chips and over 160 big blinds, but somehow Haenraets found the on the river to survive. Rampone was left with just one million in chips, yet managed to make it through the day, albeit as the shortest stack.
Team PokerStars Pro's hopes rested squarely on the shoulders of Jan Heitmann. The German came in with one of the larger stacks, but he ended up suffering two horrible beats.
Heitmann wasn't the only big name to fall, either, as five of the six remaining former EPT winners were all eliminated.
The only former winner left now is PokerStars sponsored player Dominik Panka, winner of the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. The Polish youngster finished the day with 1,705,000, which was enough to put him squarely in the middle of the pack.
Others to make it through included Maximilian Senft (1,795,000), Kiryl Radzivonau (1,860,000), and Andrea Dato (2,290,000), and they did considerably better than Josh Prager, Ryan Fee, Emil Patel, Kimmo Kurko, and Vojtech Ruzicka, all of whom were casualties at some point.
Tomorrow the tournament will play down to the final table of eight. The expectation is that it will take six or seven levels to complete the task, and the PokerNews Live Reporting team will be there to bring you all the action once more from 12 p.m. local time.
Table and Seat Draw
Table
Seat
Name
Country
Chips
1
2
Daniel Dvoress
Canada
1.570.000
1
3
Andrey Shatilov
Russia
1.390.000
1
4
Hossein Ensan
Germany
3.075.000
1
5
Maximilian Senft
Austria
1.795.000
1
6
Ji Zhang
Germany
2.285.000
1
7
Pawel Brzeski
Poland
1.980.000
2
1
Mark Wagstaff
UK
990.000
2
3
Mikhail Rudoy
Russia
1.815.000
2
4
Samuel Phillips
Mexico
1.045.000
2
6
John Andress
USA
710.000
2
7
Thomas Hueber
Austria
945.000
2
8
Sergei Popov
Russia
1.255.000
3
1
Gerald Karlic
Austria
955.000
3
2
Slaven Popov
Bulgaria
2.695.000
3
3
Mikkel Nielsen
Denmark
3.135.000
3
4
Andrea Dato
Italy
2.290.000
3
5
Mathieu Clavet
Canada
575.000
3
6
Dominik Panka
Poland
1.705.000
3
8
Andre Leattau
Germany
1.535.000
4
2
Piotr Sowinski
Poland
4.335.000
4
3
Benjamin Nicolas-[Removed:372]
France
735.000
4
4
Nick Rampone
USA
520.000
4
6
Kiryl Radzivonau
Belarus
1.860.000
4
7
Bram Haenraets
Netherlands
4.395.000
4
8
Robert Schulz
Germany
1.240.000
While you wait for the action to return, enjoy the following video with Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier discussing his early years on the scene: