Stuart Fox has around half the average stack and is looking to chip up sooner rather than later. One man who seems to love giving action is Ronny Kaiser and Fox took full advantage of this just moments ago.
The rest of the table folded to Fox in the cutoff and he went into his familiar routine of sitting with a clenched fist in front of his mouth, before picking up enough chips to raise it up to 42,000. Sami Kelopuro and Erlend Melsom both folded but Kaiser checked his cards and made it 89,000 to play.
Fox sat in his trademark pose before making two stacks of blue chips, worth 100,000 each. He then stacked these on top of each other and moved them forward, along with the rest of his chips. "I'm all in" he said. Kaiser sanp-folded and Fox added another 100,000 or so chips to his stack.
Short-stacked Erlend Melsom has just been put all in by Sami Kelopuro but he did not fancy a fight for all of his stack.
Everyone had folded to Kelopuro in the small blind and before he had even checked his card he asked Melsom how many chip he had. The answer was "around 300" and with that information Kelopuro checked his holecards and instantly moved all in. Just as quickly Melsom folded.
Arvi Vainionkulma has gone from short stack to no stack after he lost a race to Ronny Kaiser.
Kaiser raised to 40,000 from UTG+1 and then called when Vainionkulma three-bet all-in for 220,000 from the big blind.
Kaiser:
Vainionkulma:
The board ran to see the young Swiss' hand hold up. It is worth noting that the �25,000 he takes home is pure profit after winning the Skrill (Official Payment Provider Sponsor for EPT
Season 8) last longer contest yesterday that gave him his whole buy-in back in his Moneybookers account.
Grzegorz Cichocki raised from the cut-off (his third consecutive open) and the action stopped at Stuart Fox in the big blind. Fox likes to take his time and positioned his hand on his cheek and then into his more familiar pose in front of his mouth before making the call. The flop was perfect for Cichocki and after Fox checked Cichocki did win his third consecutive pot with a c-bet of 50,000 and a fold from Fox.
The first major pot of the day has gone the way of Grzegorz Cichocki and the Pole is now our chip leader.
Sami Kelopuro opened the betting with a raise to 45,000 from late position and he was called by Ronny Kaiser on the button and Cichocki made it 120,000 to play from the small blind. Kelopuro and Kaiser quickly called. All three players checked the flop and again on the turn. It looked like it may be checked around again when the came out on the river but after Cichocki and Kelopuro had checked, Kaiser took a stab at the pot and bet 330,000 and without much though Cichocki made the call and Kelopuro got out of the way.
"Good call," said Kaiser as he mucked his hand. Cichocki followed suit and he is busy stacking up his chips.
The TD has restarted the clock at the beginning of Level 23. That means that average stack sits at around 53 big blinds deep. This figure is obviously distorted though as Ronny Kaiser and Grzegorz Cichocki have over half of the chips in play between them.
The final table of the EPT Tallinn Main Event is all set and it looks like it could be one of the most exciting EPT final tables of all time.
Ronny Kaiser is the man to catch, he goes into battle armed with 2,394,000 chips. Hot on his heels though is Grzegorz Cichocki a Polish professional player who with 2,059,000 chips is the only other player to have passed the 2,000,000 chip mark.
Also in with a chance of European Poker Tour glory is the fearless Sami "LarsLuzak" Kelopuro, local player Raigo Aasmaa and Jani Sointula. At the lower end of the chip counts but only a double up away from being back in contention are Britain's Stuart Fox, Erlend "Sir_Winalot9" Melsom and Arvi Vainionkulma.
We will be starting Level 23, which means blinds will be 10,000/20,000/3,000a and the Kaiser will start with the button. The players are just having their photographs taken so we are running a tad late but join us shortly 1200 local time for all the action as it unfolds.
Cichocki has loved card games since childhood but only took up poker in 2005 after seeing it on television. He is now a full-time pro playing live No Limit Hold��em tournaments around Europe. He has played numerous EPTs but this is by far his best live result to date. His best cash before now was runner-up in a �700 side event at the first EPT San Remo in Season 4 but he also went deep at EPT Vilamoura last season and cashed in the EPT Grand Final in Madrid in May for �25,000. He is getting a lot of support going into the final table from the large Polish contingent at EPT Tallinn.
Former IT consultant Aasmaa first started playing poker online in 2008 and then live tournaments the following summer. He turned pro in December 2009 and became an Olympic Casino Online Pro a few months later. At live events, he likes playing No Limit Hold��em and PLO and favours multi-table deep stack events. Online he specialises in low-stakes PLO heads-up cash games. Making the EPT Tallinn final table is by far his best live cash; prior to now, his biggest result was taking down the Latvian leg of the Baltic Holdem series in Riga last February for �7,200. He was runner-up in the Estonian Championship of Online Poker Main Event last November and third in the Estonian Poker Championship, a live tournament which took place at Olympic Casino in Tallinn last January