Cyril Andre Leads Final 23 as Day 4 Concludes
Très rapide! So went the pace during today's Day 4 of the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event. A total of 51 players began the day, all with hopes of lasting through a couple more days' worth of poker to make it to Saturday's eight-handed final table. When the dust cleared after a little over three 90-minute levels just 23 remained to hold onto such hopes, with the Frenchman Cyril Andre leading all as the only player with more than 2 million.
The day began with a flurry of bustouts by short-stacked players, with 14 going out in the first level alone, among them Ionel Anton (51st, €13,500), Salvatore Bonavena (48th, €13,500), Thomas Butzhammer (43rd, €13,500), Lucas Reeves (42nd, €13,500), and Jason Koon (39th, €16,000).
Meanwhile start-of-day chip leader Shahaf Hadaya met with repeated misfortune during that first level and the start of the second level played today, with pocket kings proving most damaging to the Israeli.
After splitting a pot early with pocket kings in a hand that saw Jason Koon also dealt K-K, Hadaya lost a huge 1.5 million-plus chip pot with the hand against [Removed:4]. Following a 
flop, Rudelitz raised all in with 
and Hadaya called with 
, then the board ran out 
to give Rudelitz the best hand and the temporary chip lead.
Hadaya would soon after run into Gordon Huntly's 
to lose still more chips, then was finally knocked out by Yury Gulyy to finish in 32nd place (€19,000). Players continued to hit the rail in quick succession thereafter as Remi Castaignon and Hugo Pingray pushed up to the top of the leaderboard, only to be passed by Andre at the finish.
Andre earned a big bump late in the day when knocking out Lucien Cohen in 28th place in a big hand in which Cohen flopped a set and improved to a full house. That inspired Andre cheekily to write "dératiseur" on his bag at night's end (i.e., "rat killer"), a reference to the large plastic rat Cohen keeps at the table.
Then James Bills (27th) and Alexander Dovzhenko (26th) followed Cohen out the door shortly after as Level 22 concluded.. And right after the break Massimo Di Cicco hit the rail in 25th (like the previous eliminated players earning €19,000), and Sam Grafton went out in the last hand at his table in 24th (€23,000), and at that point play was halted.
Here's a look at the top 10 of the remaining 23:
EPT Deauville End-of-Day 4 Top 10 Chip Counts
| Position | Name | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cyril Andre | 2,108,000 |
| 2 | Remi Castaignon | 1,997,000 |
| 3 | Hugo Pingray | 1,864,000 |
| 4 | Aurelien Guiglini | 1,671,000 |
| 5 | Matthieu Herve | 1,194,000 |
| 6 | [Removed:4] | 1,100,000 |
| 7 | Glen Cymbaluk | 1,100,000 |
| 8 | Gordon Huntly | 1,015,000 |
| 9 | Eilert Eilertsen | 1,000,000 |
| 10 | James Mitchell | 990,000 |
Also still in the hunt are Eric Sfez, winner of the High Roller here at EPT Deauville last year, and Joseph Mouawad of Lebanon (not the same Joseph Mouawad who won the EPT London ME title back in Season 4).
Players return tomorrow at noon to play down to that final table, and we'll be back here as well to bring all of the action. In the interim, hop on over to the EPT Deauville High Roller coverage as that event has begun today.