Ladies and gentlemen, voting is now open for the EPT Season 7 Achievement of the Year Award! Many players come to mind - for instance, Martin Jacobson (three final tables) and Max Heinzelmann (two consecutive second place finishes at Berlin and San Remo). Voting is open to everyone who played any EPT event in Season 7, and the link you need is here. The winner will be announced at the EPT Awards Ceremony on Thursday night at the world-famous Pacha nightclub in Madrid.
Maria Maceiras, who has done stirling grinding today, finds herself back on a short stack (45,000) being moved tables after doubling up Bernard Vu with vs. his . The micropair doubled his microstack and leaves her with less than half the average chips as she heads away from the table she's been on all day.
Team PokerStars Pro Noah Boeken has been eliminated by his teammate Victor Ramdin in an all in preflop altercation. Boeken reshoving straight into Ramdin's but found himself staying second best when the board came .
Laszlo Bujtas slid his last few chips in preflop with against Fabrizio Gonzalez (who went deep at EPT San Remo last week) - the Uruguayan turned over a slightly ahead (ace jack of parsley!) and there were no surprises on a board.
Once climbing the heights of the chip leaderboard, Jean-Noel Thorel is now facing the felt and none too happy about it. Thprel opened preflop (7,000), called in one spot before Stefano Demontis shoved from the small blind for just under 100,000. Thorel counted the call out, head in hands, and made it (the third player folded) showing vs. .
Demontis was staring elimination in the face after the flop, but a glimmer of hope on the turned into a double-up blaze with the straightening river. Demontis made a sound like, "Geeeeeee!" delighted to be back in the running.
Thorel, meanwhile, sank right down into his chair so his nose was level with the felt, saying, "Putain!" then helpfully translating it (roughly) into, "Sh*t! Sh*t!"
We arrived just in time to see a three-way preflop showdown.
Antonio Vecchio:
McLean Karr:
Tom Bedell:
Board:
Bedell busted out and Vecchio pretty much tripled up to 150,000. Karr received a roughly 6,000 side pot which he initially contested, having misunderstood how many chips Vecchio had, but he eventually accepted the decision and settled down.
They're breaking tables into the Mandalay room next door which houses among other things the feature table - and like moths to a flame, the big names all seem to be crowding in there. Check out this one astounding table at the back of the room. Elsewhere in there, there's also a secondary Table Of Doom involving Xuan Liu, Ted Forrest, Ran Azor, Johannes Strassmann, Victor Ramdin and Dag Palovic.
The flop read when Lucien Cohen got his whole stack in; we didn't see the action but we can only assume that it was the result of an extremely ill-timed move on his opponent's part.
Cohen:
Gentleman Opponent:
Turn:
River:
Cohen waited until the river so he was absolutely certain that he'd won the hand before he stood up and shouted, "YESSS!!!" He fist-pumped and continued in French while the rest of the table remained silent around him, and he was still making occasional little noises like, "Nnhhh! Nnnnnhhhh!" while we were walking away from the table. He's at roughly 260,000.