Watson, Wheeler Headline Day 5 of EPT Monte Carlo Main Event
The penultimate Day 5 of the €5,300 Main Event as part of the 2023 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) presented by Monte-Carlo Casino® kicks off today at noon local time as the 13 remaining players look to etch their names in EPT history. Leading the way after a dominant Day 4 is Norway's Joachim Haraldstad with a stack of 5,635,000, while LIthuania's Arunas Sapitavicius (4,520,000) and the United Kingdom's Leo Worthington-Leese (3,135,000) are close on his tail.
Another Brit, the young Kenan Taylor, is also in the mix but will have to come back from a stack of 1,135,000 after going from chip leader to short stack during Day 4. Toward the middle of the pack are two of the most accomplished players in the field, high stakes veteran Mike Watson (2,020,000) and Jason Wheeler (2,815,000), who finished 19th in this event last year for €36,480.
Someone else who ran deep last year was 17th-place finisher Nicola Grieco, who got into it a bit with Wheeler on Day 4 as they battled on one of the outer feature tables.
2023 EPT Monte Carlo Day 5 Chip Counts
| Rank | Name | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joachim Haraldstad | Norway | 5,635,000 | 141 |
| 2 | Arunas Sapitavicius | Lithuania | 4,520,000 | 113 |
| 3 | Leo Worthington-Leese | United Kingdom | 3,135,000 | 78 |
| 4 | Leonard Maue | Germany | 2,920,000 | 73 |
| 5 | Jason Wheeler | United States | 2,815,000 | 70 |
| 6 | Maduka Meragal | Canada | 2,795,000 | 70 |
| 7 | Samy Boujmala | France | 2,275,000 | 57 |
| 8 | Mike Watson | Canada | 2,020,000 | 51 |
| 9 | Arnaud Enselme | France | 1,945,000 | 49 |
| 10 | Ori Hasson | Israel | 1,605,000 | 40 |
| 11 | Nicola Grieco | Italy | 1,455,000 | 36 |
| 12 | Kenan Taylor | United Kingdom | 1,135,000 | 28 |
| 13 | Oleg Vasylchenko | Ukraine | 750,000 | 19 |
Other players in the Day 5 field include Germany's Leonard Maue, France's Arnaud Enselme, Israel's Ori Hasson and Canada's Maduka Meragal (2,795,000).
Day 5 will kick off with Level 25 and blinds of 20,000/40,000/40,000. There are multiple ways to follow the action, including through PokerNews' delayed updates and on the PokerStars live stream. There's still one more day until a winner will emerge on Saturday's Day 6.
Stay tuned as the PokerNews live reporting team is on-site here on the sunny coast of Monaco and is ready to provide readers with updates on the Day 5 action.