Pierre Calamusa Bags Overall Chip Lead on Day 1c of the 2019 PokerStars EPT Prague €1,100 EPT National
The third and final flight of the 2019 PokerStars EPT Prague €1,100 EPT National came and went Sunday evening in as quick of fashion as its turbo structure was designed to be. Despite levels being half of the 40 minutes in length that its predecessors had, Day 1c saw 580 players take their shot at the last opportunity to advance to bring the three-flight total for the tournament up to 2,452 total entries.
Like the first two flights, play was scheduled to play down to 15 percent of the field, at which point all surviving players would reach the money. That number was set to be 87 for Day 1c, though four simultaneous eliminations throughout the room on what proved to be the final hand of the night saw that number become 86 6:42 remaining in Level 19 (5,000/10,000/10,000). Of those 86 players, France’s Pierre Calamusa leads the way by a wide margin with a massive stack of 900,000.
Calamusa was seen with a pile of chips as the night progressed, eclipsing 400,000 in chips in Level 17 after knocking out Ralph Schumacher when Schumacher three-bet all in for a 10 big-blind stack. Calamusa’s queen-jack suited was behind Schumacher’s ace-jack, but flopped a gutshot straight and flush draw and hit his flush on the river. His table broke and a few cries for open seats came from his new table shortly thereafter; by the final break of the night less than 30 minutes later, Calamusa had around three-fourths of a million in front of him.
When the tournament reached the final break of the evening, less than 15 eliminations were needed to reach the magic number of 87. Calamusa took advantage of the 13 minutes that were needed to reach the money, chipping up to 900,000 in that time to not only ensure the chip lead for the flight, but also for the entire tournament among the 367 players returning to Monday’s Day 2. Other big stacks around the room at the end of the night included Paul van Oort (629,000), David Schable (596,000), and Pim Kuipers (444,000).
PokerStars Ambassador Ramon Colillas also advanced, finishing the day with 85,000, but as expected with a field of this size, plenty of players were not as fortunate to advance. Another PokerStars Ambassador Kalidou Sow was among the Day 1c casualties along with the likes of Eyal Bensimhon, Michal Mrakes, Uri Reichenstein, and Henri Buhler.
Day 2 is set to see cards fly at noon local time on Monday, and will see the clock rolled back to the time it finished for Day 1a due to that flight finishing the earliest of the three, meaning all to have advanced from this turbo flight will find themselves coming back to 4:18 remaining on the clock in Level 17 (3,000/6,000/6,000) with levels increasing to 60 minutes in length for the remainder of the tournament.
PokerNews will be providing coverage throughout the remainder of the tournament, so be sure to come back to see who makes it through the next day of play.