A record-breaking 1,903 entries have been whittled down to a final 737 ahead of Day 2 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona €5,300 Main Event.
The record was set in Barcelona two years ago, but this time around the 1,305 from Day 1b, as well as 598 from Day 1a, broke the record by over 100 players.
Today the two starting flights combine for fiev levels of 90-minutes, starting at 12pm. Here are the big stacks from both flights:
Flight
Player
Country
Chip Count
1a
Ben Wilinofsky
Canada
330,000
Haoxiang Wang
China
239,300
Miguel Use
Belgium
228,900
1b
Anthony Chimkovitch
Belgium
390,000
Patrick Clarke
Ireland
321,500
Fabien Motte
France
233,000
Other big stacks include Kalidou Sow, Dominik Panka, Niall Farrell, Timothy Adams, Ognyan Dimov, Marti Roca de Torres, Fernando Pons, Sonny Franco and Shaun Deeb.
Day 2 also includes PokerStars Team Online member Jaime Staples and Randy Lew as well as Team Pros Andre Akkari, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Maria Konnikova, Leo Fernandez, Jeff Gross and Daniel Negreanu.
Stay tuned to PokerNews as the field begins to shrink as we get closer and closer to crowning the latest EPT champion.
Eric Lenoir came through three rounds of Crazy Pineapple Flip Out action to win a Platinum Pass worth $30,000 that includes entry into the$25K PokerStars Players NL Hold'em Championship, held on the Bahama's in January 2019.
The winners from the first round progressed to the semi-final which comprised of 81 players including Paul Newey, Conor Beresford, Simon Trumper, Maurice Hawkins, Daniel Neilson, Danny Tang, Niall Farrell, and Stefan Schillhabel.
The final nine was then set and each player was dealt three cards before the flop was revealed to be . Each player then mucked one card and revealed another to the table.
Tom Hall showed , and Eric Lenior showed the . The turn was the , and the river was the and revealed all nine players flipped over their other card.
Lenior held for trips and beat Manfred Sierke who also held three jacks but had a lower kicker with the .
1: Tom Hall -
2: Mehdi Keack -
3: Zorlucan Er -
4: Fabiano Kovalski -
5: Rui Da Silva E Sousa -
6: Eric Lenoir -
7: Serge Candin -
8: Joseph El Khoury -
9: Manfred Sierke -
Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu was all in with his tournament life on the line against Kunal Manohar Punjwani when we got to the table, but the Canadian was ahead preflop.
Negreanu held on the button, and Punjwani had called with from the big blind.
The flop kept Negreanu in the lead but also gave Punjwani the flush draw. The turn was a very good card for Negreanu as it reduced Punjwani's outs, but the on the river gave the latter a flush and Negreanu was eliminated early on in Day 2.
Fatima Moreira de Melo raised from under the gun and got just the one call coming from Elvis Petcu in the hijack. The flop came down , and Moreira de Melo quickly bet 6,000. Petsu called, and they saw a turn card.
Moreira de Melo gave herself a minute to think before she checked and Petsu also checked. The river was the , and Moreira de Melo checked once more only to see Petsu check to a showdown.
Team PokerStars Pro Moreira de Melo tabled for a full house, and Petsu mucked pocket nines.
On a board, Jonas Hagstrom checked to start of day chip leader Anthony Chimkovitch who moved all in. His opponent thought about his decision before folding.
Fatima Moreira de Melo got unlucky right before the third break of the day. Holding , she went all-in preflop and was in good shape for a double up, against in her opponent's hand but a flop fell, giving the latter a set of sixes. The turn and river didn't change anything and the Team PokerStars Pro made her way to the exit.
Guillaume Diaz was all in from the big blind with only 4,000 left in his stack. Adrian State in the hijack and Niall Farrell on the button went heads-up to a flop. State bet and Farrell revealed pocket sevens before folding.
This meant that Diaz was up against State for the side pot with his tournament life on the line. The tournament director asked Diaz to reveal his hand first, and flipped over . State then revealed for top pair.
Diaz was drawing very thin and needed help from the turn. The hit and gave Diaz hope as he now needed to hit a jack to survive. But it wasn't to be as the river was revealed to be the .
Diaz's departure meant that the remaining 296 players were all in the money and guaranteed minimum prize of €8,150.
After nearly eight hours of poker, the PokerStars European Tour Barcelona Main Event Day 2 has come to an end after the money bubble burst on what was a record-breaking day.
There was a confirmed total of 1,931 entrants to set a new EPT Main Event record and a generated prize pool of €9,365,350 with a first-place prize worth €1,611,500.
A confirmed 259 players will return at noon on Thursday, August, 30 for Day 3 with former EPT Berlin Main Event winner Ben Wilinofsky leading the way with a chip stack worth 850,000. Wilinofsky has been a dominant force since Day 1a where he bagged the overall chip lead then too.
Close behind him is David Petrzelka (771,000), Almedin Imsirovic (723,000), Michal Lubas (712,000) and Tony Broekhof (703,500).
Well-known faces Dominik Panka (603,000), Mark Radoja (511,000), Ben Heath (476,000), Shaun Deeb (363,000), Taylor Black (313,000), Niall Farrell (220,000), Alexandre Reard (216,500), Seth Davies (198,000), Team PokerStars Pro Jaime Staples (196,000), and last year's PokerStars Championship Barcelona winner Sebastian Sorensson (84,000) also found a bag at the end of the night.
Patrik Antonius (310,000) and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom (50,000) will also return for Day 3. The pair has fought storied rivalries online, including an illustrious clash in the biggest online cash game pot of all time worth over 1.3 million dollar. As faith would have it, the former adversaries were seated next to each other on Day 2. Both of them made it through to Day 3, although Blom is still very short. Interestingly enough, the pair has once again drawn the same table and will maybe rekindle some of their old magic on Thursday.
Action of the day
The action got underway at around 12:30 pm local time after a Crazy Pineapple Flip Out hand took place that saw Eric Lenoir get his hands on a coveted $30,000 Platinum Pass, that includes entry to the $25K PokerStars Players NL Hold'em Championship, held in the Bahamas in January 2019.
The Main Event then got cards in the air, and it wasn't before long that Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu got all his chips into the middle and put his tournament life on the line. Negreanu was on the button with ace-ten and called by Kunal Manohar Punjwani with king-nine of clubs. The flop kept Negreanu in the lead but gave Manohar Punjwani a flush draw. The ace on the turn was great for Negreanu, but the river deuce of clubs saw his hopes of a deep run come to an end, and the Canadian departed from the field.
Team PokerStars Pros Jeff Gross, Leo Fernandez, Randy Lew, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Andre Akkari, Maria Konnikova, and Muskan Sethi all did well to make Day 2 but were unable to turn their efforts into a cash.
Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Anthony Zinno, Vojtech Ruzicka, Kitty Kuo, Ivan Luca, Tony Miles,Bryn Kenney, Adrian Mateos, Jack Salter, Tom Middleton and Tom Hall also all came and went throughout the day.
Wilinofsky, who started the day second in the overall chip counts with 330,000, was able to maintain his momentum throughout the day and in one hand even correctly read his opponent's hand before it was revealed to the table. Wilinofsky bet 70,000 on a jack-four-seven-deuce-four board, and Jean Sierra Oddone called and was eliminated when Wilinofsky tabled king-jack. Sierra Oddone mucked, but the dealer was asked to reveal the hand and Wilinofsky corrected read it as jack-ten.
When the bubble loomed, and hand-for-hand play began, and there were three players all at risk, but all survived. Volodymyr Drokin, Ilya Etko, and David Domjan, who was all in for a single small blind, managed to win their respective hands and keep their Main Event dream alive.
Zorlucan Er was then eliminated by Ming Xi after the former ran his pocket queens into pocket aces and got no help from the board, which meant it was pure bubble time.
The unlucky player was to be Guillaume Diaz who found himself all in from the big blind for just 4,000. He would face Adrian State, who had got Niall Farrell to fold on the ace-nine-eight flop. As the crowd and camera crew gathered Diaz flipped over queen-four and needed a lot of help against State's top pair with ace-king. The turn ten card gave Diaz outs, and some of the rail called for a jack on the river, but it was not to be after the eight of clubs fell to confirm Diaz as the bubble boy.
The field then quickly dropped to the remaining 259 who all bagged and tagged for Day 3.
PokerNews will be back on Day 3 to continue coverage of the all the action from the PokerStars EPT Barcelona Main Event.