Soulier Leads Star-Studded Final Table at EPT Campione
We’ve seen some rapid days in eight seasons on the European Poker Tour, but this Day 4 of the Campione leg has to go straight into the top five. It took just four hours to lose 16 players and set our final table for tomorrow.
Chip leader is Fabrice Soulier (3,480,000) after a storming day. He claimed scalp after scalp, but more on that later.
The final table was set when the Bulgarian, Simeon Naydenov, and Olivier Busquet battled in a five-bet pot. Busquet three-bet, five-bet jammed with big slick. Naydenov called with jacks but fell behind, and stayed there, when a king appeared on the flop.
Here’s how the final table is set up for tomorrow:
| Seat | Name | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Olivier Busquet | USA | 3,011,000 |
| 2 | Koen De Visscher | Belgium | 1,856,000 |
| 3 | Mario Nagel | Germany | 1,210,000 |
| 4 | Stefano Puccilli | Italy | 1,450,000 |
| 5 | Jannick Wrang | Denmark | 2,882,000 |
| 6 | Fabrice Soulier | France | 3,480,000 |
| 7 | Balazs Botond | Hungary | 2,080,000 |
| 8 | Robin Ylitalo | Sweden | 1,153,000 |
Back to the beginning of the day, and the eliminations occurred from the first bell. Mexico’s hoped were dashed when Jose Manuel Nadal fell to Carlos Mora, before the latter was ousted himself moments later. He lost his chips to the uber-aggressive Naydenov who went on to bust Ronny Kaiser just a few minutes after that. Kaiser was one of two former champions still in the field today, but as the shortest stack, his task was near impossible. His 
found the going too tough against Naydenov 
.
Teresa Nousianen, the tournament director, was on the PA system seemingly constantly announcing bust out after bust out. Andrea Benelli carried a lot of the hopes of the host nation but the Italian failed to win a vital race versus David Vamplew. The latter’s 
won the sprint against the Italian’s 
.
Soulier decided to take proceedings into his own hands at this point as he went on a killing spree that saw Adrian Veghinas, Alessandro Minasi, Giuseppe Biancouiso and Alexandre Andermatt all downed. The Frenchman ran particularly well in the hand with Biancouiso as his king-queen flopped trips to crack the Italian’s two black aces.
Ramin Hajiyev raced away in 12th after an ongoing battle with Balazs Botond. A big clash was looming and ended with a big pre flop encounter. Botond had the pair to his opponent's over-cards, and managed to talk a low board out of the dealer to break through the two million chip mark.
Our final former EPT champion was David Vamplew, and he was very dejected when he busted to Olivier Busquet, in 10th place. The two of them battled deep into a break and Vamplew called all-in when he hit top pair on the turn. He was in bad shape though as the heads up specialist had flopped two pair. Busquet's hand held and that means, yet again, the EPT will crown a new champion tomorrow.
The final table will kick off at 2pm CET. The PokerNews reporting team and the EPT Live team will be on hand to bring you all the action.