Jelassi Busts Birthday Boy Klosinski to Set and Lead the Final Table

Making three tables look like one at a major tournament is always one of the best spectacles in poker. For many players just making an EPT final table is enough of an achievement. Getting there on the other hand takes guts, a firm mind and a sprinkling of luck. The PokerStars.net EPT Prague shaped a final table of eight today and we saw bucket loads of all three.

The player to find the best combination of all three to claim the overall chip lead overnight was Ramzi Jelassi. While there was drama and huge hands playing out all around him, the talented Swede kept out of trouble. The biggest hand he played was the last hand of the day, and it propelled him into the chip lead heading to tomorrow's final table. It also ruined the 40th birthday of Mariusz Klosinski. The Pole six-bet all in with and was quickly called by Jellasi who held . The final board of the day ran to see the kings hold up.

He’ll be flanked by seven others tomorrow and this is how they will line up:

Seat	Name	Chips
1	David Boyaciyan	4,635,000
2	Sergey Kuzminskiy	1,850,000
3	Ramzi Jelassi	5,675,000
4	Ben Warrington	2,200,000
5	Sotirios Koutoupas	3,775,000
6	Mark Herm	1,700,000
7	Aleh Plauski	4,705,000
8	Diego Gomez	1,380,000

Back to the beginning of the day where 21 players had a dream, a dream that would make their Christmas. Roberto Romanello probably dreamed bigger than most. The champion from two years ago was short but if fate was to be on his side he had a chance of breaking all EPT records (first double EPT champion; first to win two EPT Prague titles). It wasn’t to be though as he ran pocket tens into the pocket jacks of Mads Amot.

Iosif Beskrovnyy was big chip leader at the end of days one and two but he couldn’t sustain his position to the end and his final act was losing a race against Dany Parlafes. What can we say about poor Jeff Sarwer? He busted when he four-bet all in with only for Aleh Plauski (the three-bettor) to call with . The damage to Sarwer’s stack had already been done though when he lost with pocket aces deep in an EPT for what must be the fifth time.

Klosinski was having a great birthday until that hand and he certainly had a big present handed to him mid-way through the day’s play. He eliminated Amot in a huge pot where he needed, and received, a two-outer on the river to devastate the young Norwegian. That left Norway’s, and Team PokerStars Pro’s hopes for that matter, in the capable hands of Johnny Lodden. Like Sarwer, Lodden has had many deep runs at EPTs only for his luck to run out at the latter stages. Luck evaded him yet again here in Prague when he ran pocket tens into the pocket aces of David Boyaciyan in a button versus small blind set-up.

Shock pot and shock flop hand of the week easily occurred when Andreas Berggren was eliminated in 11th place. He got entangled in a pre-flop raising war with Plauski and found himself all in with pocket kings versus the ace-deuce of the man from Belarus. He was in great shape to double up until the flop came down containing three deuces giving Plauski quads! Read the full hand here.

Tomorrow is a big day for all these players with an awful lot of life-changing money at stake. Here’s a reminder of what they have the chance of winning: