Aliaksei Boika Leads Final 30 in Record-Setting High Roller
On Sunday, Season 12 of the European Poker Tour continued with Day 2 action in the record-setting €10,300 High Roller event. It was a long day of poker at Casino Barcelona, as the tournament played past its originally scheduled 10 levels of play. After 11 full levels, it was Aliaksei Boika who bagged up the chip lead with 1.985 million.
This event drew a total of 479 entries on Day 1 and was expected to grow bigger heading into Day 2. As registration was open until the start of the day, players were given the opportunity to try their hand once more or skip the opening day all together. Day 2 entries brought the total number up to 506, generating a total prize pool of €4,908,200. The top 71 players were guaranteed money with top prize being worth an astounding €947,300.
While Boika leads the field, the name on everyone's lips for the majority of the day was that of Spain's Adrian Mateos. Just four levels into the day, Mateos, who was already one of the big stacks, engaged in a massive confrontation with Georgios Karakousis. Mateos flopped top set with pocket eights and got Karakousis to fire into him drawing close to dead. This enormous pot brought Mateos' stack up to 855,000 and he continued to trend upward from there. At one point in the day, once he had well crossed the one-million chip mark, Mateos held double the next closest stack. He finished the day with 1.5 million, which is good for third overall in chips.
Some of the other notable names to return to the felt for Day 3 include Paul Tedeschi (913,000), Mike McDonald (818,000), Martin Finger (763,000), Jack Salter (672,000), Jeff Rossiter (608,000), Christoph Vogelsang (604,000), and Fedor Holz (397,000).
While these players all managed to survive an arduous day of poker, others were not as fortunate. The likes of Bryn Kenney, Paul Newey, Martin Jacobson, Ivan Luca, Haralabos Voulgaris, Pratyush Buddiga, Sam Greenwood, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, and Vanessa Selbst were just some of the players to fall before the money bubble was reached.
Jason Mercier looked poised to make the money and go for back-to-back deep runs in this event. Unfortunately for the Team PokerStars Pro, his hopes were dashed after a bad beat just before the bubble. Mercier found himself all in and at risk with the 
against Mateos' 
. Mateos' hot streak continued, as he managed to flop a pair of kings and turn that into trips on the river. A dejected Mercier exited the tournament area without a payday and Mateos' domination was further solidified.
After a lengthy bubble process that lasted over an hour, it was ultimately Germany's Wilfried Harig who was the last player to go home without a payday. Harig was eliminated at the hands of PokerStars Team Pro Leo Fernandez while on the other side of the room, Daniel Erlandsson managed to squeak into the money with a stack of just 2,000 — or two antes.
Players to fall once the money bubble was burst include 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Ryan Riess (71st), Davidi Kitai (69th), Angel Guillen (66th), Vitaly Lunkin (59th), Team PokerStars Pros Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier (55th) and Johnny Lodden (50th), Felix Stephensen (40th), Byron Kaverman (39th), and Team PokerStars Online Pro Isaac Haxton (36th).
Play will resume at 12:30 p.m. on Monday where the field will play down to a winner. As always, PokerNews will be on hand to provide all of the latest from the tournament felt, so stay tuned.