PokerStars EPT Vilamoura Day 4: A British Empire in Portugal
Three tables today supported all the chips in the PokerStars European Poker Tour Vilamoura as 24 players returned to play down to a final table of eight. A much quieter four levels proceeded to propel some to the top of the chip counts while ending the EPT title hopes of most the rest. Day 4 was dominated by the British; all except short-stacked Carolyn Gray (who ran a respectable ace-queen into pocket kings right at the start of the day) made the final nine, while the chip leader Toby Lewis and Sam Trickett, a whisker behind him, are by far the biggest stacks; including Teddy Sheringham in the calculations means that the British go into Day 5 holding 73 percent of the chips in play between them.
The day progressed at a fair pace even though the slow structure could have led to a very different sort of spectacle for the audience and the side-event players (not to mention Annette Obrestad andScott Montgomery who by the end were stuck to the rail supporting finalist Jason "JaspudUF" Lee). There was more big all-in preflop action than you could shake a stick at, with Grzegorz Cichocki busting with ace-nine to Trickett��s ace-queen to start off his ascent to chip dominance, Sheringham taking out Tallinn finalist Nicolo Calia with kings vs. tens and Lewis isolating Dmitry Gromov in great shape with ace-queen vs. ace-jack to send the Russian to the rail.
Meanwhile, it looked like Marton Czuczor was well-placed today to secure a final table spot, having busted Konsta Vesterinen and kept in the action all day in search of fresh chips. However, he was eliminated in 11th place (winning �20,486) when he couldn��t win a race against Trickett for what could have been a turning point type of pot.
The final table bubble was in sight when Fabrizio Ascari was eliminated in 10th place and the remaining players gathered around the same felt, the short stacks looking for their opening to double through and get back in contention. However, Erik Van den Berg��s stack was in the danger zone so far it had set up camp and when he finally moved in for five big blinds on the button, it was with queen-six offsuit, looked up by Toby Lewis in the small blind with king-seven. True to form for the young Englishmen today, king-high remained the best hand and with that the (not inconsiderable) process of bagging and tagging the chip mountains began.
Sergio Coutinho remains in representing Portugal, while Holland has a strong contender in prior EPT champ Dutchman Rob Hollink who might be the first player to make it a double. They will be joined at the felt at noon Thursday by Martin Jacobson (3rd at EPT Budapest, 6th at the Monte Carlo �5,000 six-max, and runner up at WPT Venice with a good track record in Vegas too), Frederik Jensen and chip leader Lewis. The final hand of the day was the one which gives him this title, as he ended up exactly 4,000 chips ahead of Trickett who��d look like a shoo-in for overnight chip leader. Trickett professed to being ��tilted�� not to be leading, but the two of them are friends who will play furiously against each other tomorrow all the same. As for Lewis, he simply said, in true British glass-half-empty fashion, ��We may have all the chips but we can still find a way to burn them all.��
Final Table Lineup
Seat 1: Teddy Sheringham - 1,783,000
Seat 2: Toby Lewis - 3,322,000
Seat 3: Martin Jacobson - 441,000
Seat 4: Jason Lee - 1,167,000
Seat 5: Sergio Coutinho - 872,000
Seat 6: Sam Trickett - 3,318,000
Seat 7: Rob Hollink - 259,00
Seat 8: Frederick Jensen - 375,000
Be sure to check back with the PokerNews Live Reporting Team to get all the action from Thursday's final table!
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