Day 2 - Done!
Day 2 of the EPT Tallinn Main Event is now done and dusted after six 75-minute long levels here in the luxurious Swissotel. The 198 players who survived Day 1a and Day 1b joined together today and they all shared a common goal, to survive the day and keep the dream of becoming a European Poker Tour Champion alive.
The dream ended abruptly for more than half of the field as only 63 made it through with their chipstacks intact. One man who has more than his fair share of chips is Sweden's Nikolas Liakos who flew under the radar all day long but bagged up a colossal 460,200 when play came to an end. Part of his massive stack was won when he cracked Henri Kasper's pocket aces with a lowly pair of fours, which went onto make a set by the river.
The only other player to make it past the 400,000 chip mark was Finland's Lari Sivho who ended the day with 400,100 chips. Sivho only has one previous EPT cash and that was a 15th place finish in Barcelona in Season 7 but he does have fond memories of Tallinn, having won a €2,000 side event last year for a cool €80,191.
Along with these monster stacks there are still some notable faces in the crowd including Team PokerStars Pro Arnaud Mattern, who gave a new definition to grinding it out today. At no point did he find himself with more than 40 big blinds and at one point looked set to double up but his pocket nines lost to a runner-runner straight to leave him very short stacked indeed. He somehow managed to drag himself back into the fight and he will start Day 3 with 58,900.
Other notables include EPT Prague Champion Roberto Romanello, Praz Bansi and Sami Kelopuro. A special mention has to go out to Johan van Til who started the day with just 5,000 chips and somehow ended the day with 199,000. Ironically his online poker alias is “busto soon” but it does not look like he will bust out any time soon.
Day 3 of the EPT Tallinn Main Event restarts at 1200 noon and we will definitely see the money bubble burst. We believe the plan is to play for five levels so that everyone can attend the lavish PokerStars party at 2100 where there will be free drinks galore! Join us live from 1200 noon for all the action as it happens here at EPT Tallinn.