Day 2 Wraps Up
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The doors opened with 177 players in their seats for the push toward the money. A whole mass of the Team PokerStars pros were still in contention, but they would begin to fall one-by-one as the day progressed. First to go was Dutchman Joep van den Bijgaart. Then went Katja Thater (Germany) and Chad Brown (USA). Rino Mathis (Sweden) and Juan Manuel Pastor (Spain) followed, and Luca Pagano (Italy) and JP Kelly (UK) weren't far behind. American Jason Mercier had worked his stack up to a healthy count before "punting" it off, as he said. Mercier six-bet shoved with queen-jack, and he couldn't push Antony Lellouche off of his pocket kings. Portuguese Team Pro Henrique Pinho was the last of the PokerStars casualties of the day when his ace-king ran smack into pocket aces.
A few interesting stories are beginning to emerge as the tournament progresses. The aforementioned Lellouche is having another solid run through the middle stages of this event, a position he's familiar with here at the EPT. Canadian chess prodigy Jeff Sarwer is also in a familiar spot, perched firmly atop the leader board. At the last stop in Warsaw, Sarwer rode his solid decision-making to a monster chip lead and a deep run at the final table. He's back at it again here in Vilamoura, storming through this second day to amass another huge chip stack. We're still waiting for the final chip tallies, but it appears Sarwer has secured the overnight chip lead with more than 525,000.
We've got lots of big names near the top of the board, and tomorrow is set up to be a great day of poker. Along with Lellouche and Sarwer, Pierre Neuville, Ruben Visser, Jude Ainsworth, and Martin Wendt are all up there in contention. Just behind them lurk another group of dangerous players, the likes of Tobias Renkemeier, Ross Boatman, and Jim "Mr_BigQueso" Collopy. Still, it really is anyone's game with 75-minute levels and the fantastic EPT structure working for them.
The full overnight chip counts and seating assignments will be posted as soon as they become available to us.
Day 3 will run at high noon tomorrow, and we'll be here scribbling away furiously in our notepads, trying to catch every flop, turn, and river as we play down to the final 24 players. We'll see you then!