The Force is Still with Forsmo as He Maintains EPT Sanremo Lead Heading into Day 4
After two long days of poker the players were treated to a relatively short day on Day 3 of the PokerStars.com EPT Sanremo. There was a whole lot of excitement packed into nearly seven hours of play though. The two headline makers of the day were the end of day chip leader (Inge Forsmo) and the unfortunate player to bubble (Renaud Desferet).
Inge Forsmo started the day as chip leader, lost it for a while, but managed to abuse the bubble and finish strong to end the day with 1,021,000 chips. Not bad for a player who admits to having little patience in live tournaments, highlighted by the fact he was all in with ten-high just 45 minutes into Day 1.
Chasing the likeable Norwegian are Angelo Recchia (851,000), Carmelo Vasta (844,000), Laurent Polito (717,000), David Vamplew (547,000), Alex Roumeliotis (505,000) and Isaac Haxton (488,000). The latter on these was set to be a top-three stack until he lost 375,000 off his stack on the last hand of the night. Also still in contention are the likes of Ludovic Lacay, Shaun Deeb, Matt Salsberg, Justin Bonomo, Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Roberto Romanello.
Team PokerStars had a mixed day. The only player to make it through to Day 4 was Luca Moschitta from Team Online, and he will come back with 289,000. The fortunes of the others can be read below.
There were three all ins and calls before the bubble burst, and remarkably all three players at risk had pocket aces. Michele Di Lauro, Maksim Semisoshenko and Samuel Panzica held their breaths, and all managed to survive. When Desferet made his move he was not so strong (
), and he was called by Michael Benvenuti with a lot stronger (
). The board ran out 
to offer him huge hope before the river washed all that hope, and money, away.
Rupert Elder and Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree came back to today with dreams of breaking two records on the EPT: to be the first double EPT winner, and the first to claim two EPT Sanremo titles. Elder was one of the first to bust when his pocket eights failed to outdraw an opponent’s pocket tens. Boeree faired a lot better and managed to make the money before busting in 120th when she lost a race to Mike Watson.
Those who finished outside of the money included Jude Ainsworth (a cruel 122nd), Andre Akkari (144th), Rob Yong, Pius Heinz, Sam Trickett, Jose “Nacho” Barbero, Bryan Paris and Kyle Cheong.
Players luckier than these who we will not see tomorrow include Chris Moneymaker (116th), Chris Brammer (115th), Ana Marquez (104th), Marc-Andre Ladouceur (91st), Fabian Quoss (86th), Stephen Chidwick (83rd), Ben Vinson (72nd) and Sam Razavi (70th).
The players will return at 2:00 PM CET tomorrow where they will play down to 24 players remaining. We expect it to be an even shorter day than today and, as ever, the PokerNews reporting team will be on hand to bring you all the action at this major event heats up. Talking of major events, the whole team are taking part in the media poker tournament tonight. We hope to represent well and will bring you a full report tomorrow.
From the Italian Riviera it’s goodnight.