Zvi Stern was missing from the table, but luckily for us his former neighbor Bart Lybaert knew exactly what had happened. He told us the hand with a smile on his face, stating it was rather bizarre.
From the cutoff, Zvi Stern raised to 6,500 only to be met by a button three-bet from Jean-Noel Thorel. Stern called and the flop came . Stern now open shipped his last 70,000 or so, and Thorel called.
Zvi Stern:
Jean-Noel Thorel:
The on the turn gave Thorel a flush draw he didn't even need, and the completed the board. With just ace high really, Thorel took down the huge pot.
From middle position, Gaelle Baumann raised it up to 6,500. Her neighbor Sven Magirius made the call and the two took a flop of . Baumann fired 7,600 and Magirius made the call.
The on the turn had Baumann bet 12,500 and she was soon facing a raise to 37,000. Baumann called and tapped the table once the completed the board.
Magirius fired 36,000 and after about a minute, Baumann announced all in. Magirius had just over 100,000 or so behind, and went deep into the tank. After several minutes, he folded.
After 14 levels of 75 minutes each, the 605-entry strong field of the 2016 PokerStars EPT12 Dublin €5,300 Main Event has been whittled down to its last 127 hopefuls and they will return to the tables of the Royal Dublin Society in half an hour from now at 12 p.m. local time.
Only the top 87 will receive at least €9,100 for their efforts and best-positioned for the first-place payout of €561,900, is Ivan Banic from Croatia with 381,200 in chips. The online MTT player was up to more than half a million in chips already before losing a couple hands at the end of play and would have almost been caught by Alex Difelice (359,500).
The final spot on the podium belongs to Tudor Purice (323,700), closely followed by Jiachen Gong (323,200) and Mikhail Petrov (322,600). Day 1a chip leader Gilles Bernies (311,700) and Adrien Allain (297,000) also made it into the top 10 overall whereas PokerStars' red spade is represented by three players still: Team Online's Jaime Staples (289,600) as well as the Team Pros Luca Pagano (230,000) and Liv Boeree (147,600).
Other former EPT Main Event champions remaining include Mike McDonald (291,000), Dominik Panka (203,700), Adrian Mateos (172,000), Ognyan Dimov (167,700) and David Vamplew (91,000). Five 90-minute levels are scheduled for Day 3 and plenty of other talented names of the international poker circuit are still in, so make sure to follow the PokerNews live reporting and stay up to date.