Philip Sternheimer Leads the Last €10K High Roller of the EPT
The 2014 PokerStars.it European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event played down to a final table today, as did the €10,300 High Roller. The last €10K buy-in High Roller of the season attracted two late reentries, which brought the field up to 105 entries (88 unique/17 reentries) and created a prize pool of €1,029,000. The top 15 would make the money, with the eventual winner taking home €265,000.
After nine one-hour levels of play on Day 2, the field was whittled down to the final table of eight. The man best positioned to make a run at the top prize is Philip Sternheimer, who is the chip leader with 938,000. That said, he faces some stiff competition that includes Griffin Benger (892,000) and Ole Schemion (831,000).
As previously mentioned, just two players opted to reenter before the start of play – Olivier Busquet and Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst. The latter was eager to amass some EPT10 Player of the Year points, but it proved a quick and fruitless endeavor.
No one should let me play 22bb poker on no sleep. Made terrible jam pre with KQ and busted within 10 min. Worst part is now I'm in San Remo.Follow @VanessaSelbst
Busquet lasted quite a bit longer, but ultimately fell short of the money. Others who left empty handed included Connor Drinan, Jeff Rossiter, Martin Finger, Sylvain Loosli, Martin Jacobson, Yann Dion, Steve O'Dwyer, Mickey Petersen, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Day 1 chip leader Alexander Kopylkov, and Ognjen Sekularac, who ended up as the bubble boy.
Sekularac was eliminated in Level 17 (4,000/8,000/1,000) when he was all in and at risk for 96,000 with the 
and Sternheimer made a reluctant call with the 
. The 
flop kept the Serbian in the lead, but then the 
appeared on the turn. No jack on the river and Sekularac was out in 16th place with nothing to show for it.
From there the in-the-money eliminations began to mount and included Dmitry Yurasov (15th - €17,500), Thomas Muhlocker (14th - €17,500), Artem Litvinov (13th - €19,050), Ismail Erkenov (12th - €19,050), Jason Lavallee (11th - €21,600), David Vamplew (10th - €21,600), and Dimitar Danchev (9th - €26,750), who lost a flip to finish as the final table bubble boy.
The third and final day will kick off at 12 p.m. local time on Sunday and the remaining eight players will play down to a winner. The the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be on hand to capture the action in both the High Roller and the Main Event.
Join us then, but while you wait be sure to check out this video where your favorite pros explain what they do to prepare for the day: