Main Event
Day 6 Started
2012 PokerStars.com EPT Sanremo
Main Event
Day: 6
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2012 PokerStars.com EPT Sanremo
Buy-in
€5,000
Prize Pool
€3,865,450
Entries
797
Level
31
Blinds
60,000 / 120,000
Ante
20,000
Eight Remain; A Champion Sits Among Them
The 797 players that originally entered this tournament are now just eight. Last night the final 24 took their seats playing eight-handed over three tables to battle for a spot on the prestigious final table. By the end of the evening, Jason Lavallee held the highest chip position with seven others trailing him for the championship.
There were still plenty of notable names alive in the tournament when play began yesterday. Players like Matt Salsberg, Michael Benvenuti, and Yevgeniy Timoshenko gave it their all but were ultimately unable to earn a seat at the final table.
Others, on the other hand, thrived when the cards hit the felt. While Lavallee is the biggest stack on the table with 5.545 million, French professional Ludovic Lacay is sitting right on his heels. On the other end of the spectrum sits Artem Litvinov who will have his work cut out for him at this final table. Coming in as the short stack with only 800,000, Litvinov will have to get something going early in order to survive this final table.
| Seat | Player | Counts |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ludovic Lacay | 5,366,000 |
| 2 | Jason Tompkins | 3,605,000 |
| 3 | Adrian Piasecki | 2,045,000 |
| 4 | Micah Raskin | 1,550,000 |
| 5 | Jason Lavallee | 5,545,000 |
| 6 | Ismael Bojang | 1,755,000 |
| 7 | Angelo Recchia | 2,845,000 |
| 8 | Artem Litvinov | 800,000 |
Cards will be in the air shortly here at this final table. Be sure to stay tuned as we document the quest to a champion!
Seat 1: Ludovic Lacay (5,366,000)
Lacay has been playing EPTs since Season 4 and has already cashed in nine Main Events, including eighth at EPT5 Warsaw for € 32,843 and 21st at the EPT6 Grand Final for €52,000.
Like many other players, the 27-year-old got into online poker after enjoying success in the video game world where he played for one of the best French “Counter Strike” teams. Known as an aggressive poker player, Lacay first came to prominence in 2007 when he was runner-up in the WPT Spanish Championship for €295,200. But his best live cash to date was 16th place in the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $500,557, a result that also put him in the spotlight outside Europe. Although he has yet to win a major title, he is considered one of the best players in France (11th in the All Time Money List) and has already accrued $2 million in live tournament winnings.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 2: Jason Tompkins (3,605,000)
Jason Tompkins has been among the chip leaders in Sanremo since day one and has now become the first Irish player to reach an EPT Main Event final table since Mick Graydon in Deauville last season. Ireland is still searching for its first EPT champion and Tompkins has been followed throughout this event by numerous supporters on Irish poker forums and via Twitter. Known online as "blaaaaaah666", Tompkins actually prefers live poker and has live cashes dating back from 2007. He has made numerous final tables, including one of the UKIPT, and his biggest score was for $85,981 from a sixth place finish in Event 54: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em at the 2012 World Series of Poker.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 3: Adrian Piasecki (2,045,000)
Piasecki may well be new to playing live poker, having only played “a few” €1,000 events, but he says he’s warming up to playing live. Given that he’s guaranteed himself at least €65,450 here in Sanremo, that should come as little surprise. He certainly seems a man of understatement, admitting that poker was his only way of making money but drawing the line at calling himself a professional player. Piasecki currently lives with his parents but said that situation is likely to change following this deep run. “The money I win here tomorrow, it will help me to stand on my own feet,” said Piasecki, who comes into the final table fifth in chips.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 4: Micah Raskin (1,550,000)
Micah Raskin is a 44-year-old businessman from New York, USA, who has become a regular fixture on the international poker circuit. He has amassed more than $1.1 million in live tournament winnings during a relatively brief career at the tables, and is now at his first EPT final table. He grew up in Queens, New York, where he learned poker from his father, Tommy while playing in the basement of his family home with his twin brothers. The twins - Logan and Roger - are here in Sanremo and have been supporting Raskin from the rail throughout the tournament.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 5: Jason Lavallee (5,545,000)
Jason Lavallee is a 26-year old professional poker player from Montreal, Quebec. Though he generally plays a mixture of both tournaments and cash games, Lavallee has heightened his focus on tournament play as of late. Lavallee had his first major tournament cash back in 2007, but he earned his greatest tournament cash by finishing in 2nd place in the $15,000 World Poker Tour Championship event at Festa al Lago for $795,150. Since then Lavallee has been able to bring his total tournament winnings up to an impressive $1,055,312. Winning today will give Lavallee the biggest tournament score of his life and he is in a good position to do so as he is the biggest stack at the table.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 6: Ismael Bojang (1,755,000)
Ismael Bojang, 23, has been playing poker for five years now. A former Economics student at Göttingen University, Bojang is mainly a live cash and tournament player and plays very little online. This is a decision that he puts down to the entertainment value. It’s more fun to play live, he says, with fewer distractions. Living in Hamburg, he regularly travels to France and Austria to play Omaha cash games.
Despite this he still plays the occasional PokerStars tournament on a Sunday but it’s live poker that has brought him the most success, including four cashes at this year’s World Series of Poker. To date his live tournament earnings amount to nearly $400,000.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 7: Angelo Recchia (2,845,000)
Angelo Recchia hails from San Vito dei Normanni, Brindisi and first started playing poker six years ago in online heads up SNGs and MTTs. His first live experience was in 2010 competing in the PokerStars.it All Stars Of Poker; he finished sixth for €12,000. Recchia graduated in linguistics, then did military service and worked as a barman all around Italy before becoming a poker pro. His best live result to date was winning a €1,000 IPT Sanremo side event in January for €32,000. He also has several other smaller cashes to his name from the PCA, WSOP and Eureka Poker Tour. Online, he came fifth in the PokerStars.it Sunday Special for almost €10,500 and third in the PokerStars.it Sunday High Roller for around €6,500.
*Courtesy of PokerStars
Seat 8: Artem Litvinov (800,000)
Coming in as the short stack today, Russian player Artem Litvinov is an EPT regular with five Main Event cashes to his name already, including 16th at EPT8 Deauville for €26,000. Litvinov works in marketing but plays a lot of high stakes poker, both live and online. He first started playing poker about seven years ago. His best result to date was in April when he outlasted players such as Phil Ivey, Alex Bilokur and Martin Finger to finish fifth in the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final High Roller for €216,000. His live tournament winnings already total nearly $500,000 – but would have been €122,960 more if he hadn’t bubbled the Super High Roller at EPT Barcelona. Online, he also has a string of tidy results including third in a $2k SCOOP NL event for $206,784 and third in a WCOOP event for $144,808.
*Courtesy of PokerStars