EPT media doyenne Mad Harper shared a fun little story about Dan Heimiller, the man who made two WSOP final tables this summer and bubbled a third. She told it so well we thought we'd present it to you as it was presented to us:
"Dan Heimiller update.. i met him in the car park about an hour ago. he was wandering back to the casino.. not in a huge hurry. Are you out, I said. No, he said.. but I have so many chips I thought I would just go back to the hotel to bet on my baseball game. At the time he had about 70k. feel free to use this super-cool story."
Team PokerStars Pro Juan Maceiras has been crippled by Toby Lewis after the latter pushed all-in on the turn of a board. Maceiras made a quick call with against Lewis' but the river was the , Maceiras made a set but Lewis rivered the nut straight to double up to around 75,000.
Afterwards James Dempsey said in typical cutting fashion, "When I grow up, I wanna run like Toby Lewis...I don't wanna play like him though, I'd be skint."
Another river bet and another big call for a large proportion of his stack - this time Marcin Horecki with the decision on a board. Konsta Vesterinen had bet out 6,600 and the table fell (ever so briefly) silent while the Polish Team Pokerstars Pro thought about it. Eventually he called, but mucked when Vesterinen showed .
A millisecond later Antonio Esfandiari to Matt Widdoes/Marcin Horecki: "So how much to not shave for one year. Not trim, shave, any part of your body..." I think this might be a day-long game of Lodden Says, as Widdoes continued to talk while Horecki made a private note on a piece of paper, folded it and left it on the table, with a smile - clearly not overly disturbed by his loss on the previous hand. These two have been chatting each other up mini-prop-bet style all day long, and will probably only stop when they're made to exit the tournament room. Perhaps not even then, and they'll be back on Day Two trading the same oft-wagered hundred dollar bills back and forth.
Over 10,000 in chips had amassed in the middle of the table by the time we arrived on the river of the board. Not a massive pot exactly, but not insignificant. Two players had checked around to Vicky Coren in position.
"Are there three hearts there?" she asked.
The dealer chuckled and confirmed: "Yes, there are three hearts there."
Coren nonchalantly bet 5,000. Alexandru Cezarescu just flat-called in the big blind, the third player folded, and they turned over their cards. Coren turned hers over first - for the nut flush. Cezarescu made a face and turned over for the second nut flush, while everyone at the table ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the flat call.
One Lerner twin, the one who was not seated at that table anyway, appeared out of nowhere. He told Coren, "We're expecting another tweet from you."
Another player at the table explained to Lerner that Coren had just won a decent pot with the ace-high flush against the king-high flush.
Lerner looked down at Coren's stack. "So where's the rest of the pot?" he asked cheerfully.
Whatever Lerner thinks about it, Coren's 34,000 stack represents a fine comeback from the 10,000 or so she was down to earlier in the day.
The Brits love their banter like no other, the only thing more fun than winning a big pot is watching one of your best friends lose an even bigger one. James Dempsey opened preflop from the button to 1,600 only for the big blind to reraise to 4,100.
Dempsey then 4-bet to 9,000 but the big blind moved all-in, Dempsey rechecked his cards and quickly folded. All of this delighted Toby Lewis who quickly made an "in your eye" gesture. It's all harmless good fun, but the bragging rights at the end of this day are worth so much more if you can knock out a friend...
More action than a blended Die Hard box set now as under the gun raiser Jose Maria de Novonha found all the interest he could have wanted - first off Dario Minieri upped it to 7,000, then Joao de Silva fourbet to 17,800 (with over 40k behind). The shortest stack involved, de Novonha, immediately got it all over the line (around 26k). Back to Minieri, who checked out de Silva's stack, then moved in enough 5k chips to cover him as well!
De Silva thought for so long the clock was finally called on him, and immediately Minieri said, "I have Kings. You have Aces?" De Novonha nodded his agreement and it was vs. , with a third Ace being the only excitement brought by the board.
Smiling, Minieri paid off the correct amount to double him up and said, "That's poker! That's part of the game!" with a grin which seemed completely genuine, not like when players are really disguising their bad beat/cold deck sourness with the empty words of even-temperedness. Plus it didn't really hurt him as he's still one of the chip leaders. De Novonha up to 70k.
As we already mentioned, we have no fewer than two Lerners in the field, and we are having some difficulty telling them apart. We were hoping that the de Meulder twins would both be playing tomorrow, but for some reason Christophe de Meulder has decided not to play the main event and we are only getting Matthias.
Nevertheless we have discovered one more it's-going-to-be-fantastic-if- they-both-make-the-final-table familial pairing. We knew that Team PokerStars Pro Juan Maceiras was playing today, but it has only just come to our attention that his dad, Juan Maceiras Barro, is also in the field. He qualified online. You may know Mr. Maceiras Sr. better by his online name, "vietcong01" - he's won the Sunday Million twice. At another EPT not so long ago we heard Juan Jr.'s sister Maria Maceiras tell her table, "In my family even the dog plays poker." We're not sure whether she's going to be playing tomorrow as well - and if Maceiras Sr. increases his current 20,000 stack it could possibly end up being an all-Maceiras final...
A few months back, Arnaud Mattern was at a loss, his fellow Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier was seemingly invincible, doing well at everything whereas Mattern just wasn't getting the same breaks.
Mattern did some thorough research into hand histories and found one important difference of what ElkY was doing that he wasn't, ElkY was simply winning every crucial flip where Mattern was losing them.
Today though, Mattern is winning these big hands, having been moved tables, Mattern 3-bet Martin Wendt's 2,100 UTG open to 5,600. Wendt shipped his 20,000 stack into the middle and Mattern called with flipping vs Wendt's .
As the board came , Wendt sighed as he put his coat on, "That's how you win these things..."
As we approach the time for the bagging and the tagging, the title of Overnight Chip Leader is being fought over between two of PokerStars' finest: Dario Minieri, and Andre Coimbra of Team Online. As we head into the last few hands of Day 1a, they're on just shy of 150,000 apiece and we'll have to wait until the end of play to find out which of these two players - or indeed someone else - ends up top of the chip count pops.
board. Maceiras made a quick call with 
but the river was the 
, Maceiras made a set but Lewis rivered the nut straight to double up to around 75,000.
.
board. Not a massive pot exactly, but not insignificant. Two players had checked around to Vicky Coren in position.
for the nut flush. Cezarescu made a face and turned over 
for the second nut flush, while everyone at the table ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the flat call.
vs. 
, with a third Ace being the only excitement brought by the board.
