Bram Haenraets Leads the Final 25 Players into Day 5
There were 102 players returning for Day 4 of the record-breaking European Poker Tour event here in Barcelona, but after six levels and 12 long hours, just 25 remain going into the penultimate day of the first EPT of Season 11.
The chip leader to close the day was Bram Haenraets of the Netherlands, and he is remarkably playing his first-ever live tournament, but hasn't been afraid to show a lot of aggression. At one point, Haenraets was just one card and three outs away from elimination in a massive pot against Nick Rampone. Haenraets made a huge check-raise shove on the turn of a board with the , but Rampone called with the . The pot was worth over four million in chips and over 160 big blinds, but somehow Haenraets found the on the river to survive. Rampone was left with just one million in chips, yet managed to make it through the day, albeit as the shortest stack.
Team PokerStars Pro's hopes rested squarely on the shoulders of Jan Heitmann. The German came in with one of the larger stacks, but he ended up suffering two horrible beats.
Heitmann wasn't the only big name to fall, either, as five of the six remaining former EPT winners were all eliminated.
The only former winner left now is PokerStars sponsored player Dominik Panka, winner of the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. The Polish youngster finished the day with 1,705,000, which was enough to put him squarely in the middle of the pack.
Others to make it through included Maximilian Senft (1,795,000), Kiryl Radzivonau (1,860,000), and Andrea Dato (2,290,000), and they did considerably better than Josh Prager, Ryan Fee, Emil Patel, Kimmo Kurko, and Vojtech Ruzicka, all of whom were casualties at some point.
Tomorrow the tournament will play down to the final table of eight. The expectation is that it will take six or seven levels to complete the task, and the PokerNews Live Reporting team will be there to bring you all the action once more from 12 p.m. local time.
Table and Seat Draw
Table | Seat | Name | Country | Chips |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | 1.570.000 |
1 | 3 | Andrey Shatilov | Russia | 1.390.000 |
1 | 4 | Hossein Ensan | Germany | 3.075.000 |
1 | 5 | Maximilian Senft | Austria | 1.795.000 |
1 | 6 | Ji Zhang | Germany | 2.285.000 |
1 | 7 | Pawel Brzeski | Poland | 1.980.000 |
2 | 1 | Mark Wagstaff | UK | 990.000 |
2 | 3 | Mikhail Rudoy | Russia | 1.815.000 |
2 | 4 | Samuel Phillips | Mexico | 1.045.000 |
2 | 6 | John Andress | USA | 710.000 |
2 | 7 | Thomas Hueber | Austria | 945.000 |
2 | 8 | Sergei Popov | Russia | 1.255.000 |
3 | 1 | Gerald Karlic | Austria | 955.000 |
3 | 2 | Slaven Popov | Bulgaria | 2.695.000 |
3 | 3 | Mikkel Nielsen | Denmark | 3.135.000 |
3 | 4 | Andrea Dato | Italy | 2.290.000 |
3 | 5 | Mathieu Clavet | Canada | 575.000 |
3 | 6 | Dominik Panka | Poland | 1.705.000 |
3 | 8 | Andre Leattau | Germany | 1.535.000 |
4 | 2 | Piotr Sowinski | Poland | 4.335.000 |
4 | 3 | Benjamin Nicolas-[Removed:372] | France | 735.000 |
4 | 4 | Nick Rampone | USA | 520.000 |
4 | 6 | Kiryl Radzivonau | Belarus | 1.860.000 |
4 | 7 | Bram Haenraets | Netherlands | 4.395.000 |
4 | 8 | Robert Schulz | Germany | 1.240.000 |
While you wait for the action to return, enjoy the following video with Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier discussing his early years on the scene: