Day 2 of The €10,300 High Roller Ends in Dramatic Fashion
When play resumed at noon, the 60 hopefuls who advanced after Day 1 were joined by another six entrants to boost the overall field of the record-breaking PokerStars.fr European Poker Tour Deauville €10,300 High Roller event to 128 entries. After 10 one-hour levels, only 12 would remain, however four of them have less than four big blinds for Day 3 after what was a crazy last four hands.
Leading the field was Nikolay Komcharokov with 1,145,000 in chips, and the Russian is the only player above a million, which Robin Ylitalo (998,000) missed by one ante. Ivan Luca was in third place with 944,000 after cracking the pocket jacks of Tobias Peters with pocket fours to leave the Dutchman with less than two antes for Day 3.
Jean-Noel Thorel (912,000) received a huge double up through Garret Gruener (16,000) just before the last three hands of the day were announced, and the American will return with less than one big blind. The penultimate hand on Table 18 then saw a three-way all-in clash that ended in the triple up of Joao Ribeiro (866,000), reducing Josip Simunic (73,000) and Davidi Kitai (65,000) to less than four big blinds for the final.
Among the early casualties to join the rail before the money were Team PokerStars Pro's Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier and Eugene Katchalov, Team PokerStars Pro Online's Vicente Delgado, and current EPT player of the year contender Joao Vieira. Former PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Dimitar Danchev, EPT Vienna champion Oleksii Khoroshenin, Ivan Soshnikov, Sergio Aido, and Adrian Mateos also left empty-handed, and then Dominik Nitsche was sent to the rail two spots shy of the money. The bubble burst in Level 17 when Jesper Feddersen could not improve with ace-ten versus ace-queen.
Five players busted within the money: Jonathan Little (17th), Fabio Sperling (16th), Vladimir Troyanovskiy (15th), Artur Koren (14th), and Roman Korenev (13th) all received a portion of the €1,228,800 prize pool. The remaining 12 players are guaranteed at least €22,110 but all eyes are set on the €309,170 first-place payout. In addition to the title and cash prize, the winner of the EPT Deauville High Roller will receive an exclusive watch worth more than €5,000 from luxury Swiss brand SLYDE.
Play resumes at 12 p.m. local time in Level 21 at blinds of 10,000/20,000 with an ante of 3,000. Four players are under four big blinds, and a fifth is less than 11 big blinds. That means plenty of action is guaranteed, so make sure to tune back into PokerNews for the conclusion of this grand event.