Alex Tikhoniouk Leads After Day 2 of the PokerStars.fr EPT 11 Deauville Main Event

Christian Zetzsche

Level 14 : 1,200/2,400, 300 ante

Alex Tikhoniouk spins 4 big blinds into lead

Day 2 of the PokerStars.fr EPT 11 Deauville Main Event started with 335 players remaining and Frenchman Guillaume Darcourt leading the way. With the late registration still open until the action restarted at noon, another three players exchanged �5,300 for 30,000 chips to boost the overall attendance to 592 entries in total and 338 remaining. Tournament staff announced that the top 87 spots will get paid with the eventual winner receiving �543,700 as well as the EPT trophy and Slyde watch on Feb. 7.

The action kicked off with a bang Tuesday as Michal Mrakes lost his top 10 stack to Andrius Bielskis within the first half an hour of play. Mrakes and 64 others were eliminated in the first two levels, including Gaelle Baumann, Vojtech Ruzicka, former EPT champion David Vamplew, Christophe Benzimra, Ihar Soika and Philippe Ktorza.

Vicky Coren-Mitchell, the first and only two-time EPT champion, will have to wait for another chance to win her third. She failed to improve with against the of 2013 PCA champion Dimitar Danchev. Michael Tureniec busted to Rube Visser in a battle of former EPT winners when the Dutchman improved with to better the Swede's . PokerStars Team Online Pros Vicente Delgado and Gabriel Nassif were equally unfortunate, as was PokerStars Team Pro Julien Brecard.

Three former EPT Deauville Main Event winners returned to the tables but only one would make it through. Both Lucien Cohen and Jake Cody were eliminated on the feature table: Cody was trying to bluff Clement Genon-Catalot on a board of but the Frenchman called his river shove with and the Brit's was no good. Cohen then lost with pocket sixes against pocket jacks to only leave Remi Castaignon behind. The Frenchman turned a full house early on with and Damien Lhommeau got his stack in drawing dead with for a gutshot and flush draw. Castaignon would end the day with 175,600 chips.

In the very last hand of the day Fabrice Soulier lost a coin flip with against the of Simon Ravnsbaek, who had bought in just before Day 2 kicked off and ran up the stack to 197,600. Once everyone bagged and tagged their chips, only 138 players remained and Alex Tikhoniouk claimed the lead with 312,600 chips. The Irishman is playing his first ever EPT event and was even down to only four big blinds early today before spinning it up.

Tikhoniuk is closely followed by former EPT champion and EPT 11 London runner-up Kevin MacPhee (308,300) and Robert Schulz with 296,900. Other big stacks include PokerStars Team Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier (281,500), Carlo Savinelli (275,400), Benjamin Pollak (275,000), Nicolau Villa-Lobos (230,600), PokerStars Team Pro Jan Heitmann (199,000) and start-of-the-day chip leader Guillaume Darcourt (172,600). Eugene Katchalov started as one of the shortest stacks and doubled up several times to claim 137,000 whereas fellow Team Pro Marcin Horecki (112,000), PokerStars sponsored player Dominik Panka (45,800) and Team PokerStars Pro Online (37,500) also advanced.

The action will resume at 12 p.m. local time with blinds at 1,500/3,000 and a running ante of 400. The level duration increases from 75 to 90 minutes on Day 3, and the money is expected to be reached during the five levels of play. Stay tuned to the PokerNews live coverage to see who lands on the bubble!

Day 3 Redraw:

Table	Seat	Name	Country	Chips
8	1	Alexandre Reard	France	85,000
8	3	Martins Adeniya	UK	62,200
8	4	Tatiana Barausova	Russia	44,500
8	5	Miroslav Alilovic	France	173,000
8	6	Benjamin Pollak	France	275,000
8	7	Marcin Wydrowski	Poland	56,200
8	8	Julien Duveau	France	233,000

9	1	Jannick Wrang	Denmark	111,500
9	2	Francesco Delfoco	Italy	150,000
9	3	Bertrand Grospellier	France	281,500
9	4	Joseph El Khoury	Lebanon	87,000
9	5	Yves Soussan	France	109,400
9	6	Javier Rodriguez	Spain	90,900
9	7	Massou Cohen	France	215,900
9	8	Carlo Savinelli	Italy	275,400

10	1	Daniel Carlsson	Sweden	45,100
10	2	Jan Heitmann	Germany	199,000
10	3	Patryk Slusarek	Poland	112,200
10	4	Alfie Adam	UK	135,200
10	5	Ivan Gabrieli	Italy	147,100
10	6	Nicolas Proust	France	48,300
10	7	Daniel Wilson	Ireland	203,300
10	8	Philippe Gellman	France	12,700

11	1	Paul-Francois Tedeschi	France	83,500
11	2	Simon Ravnsbaek	Denmark	197,600
11	3	Nicolau Villa-Lobos	Brazil	230,600
11	4	Dany Parlafes	Romania	86,700
11	5	Vadim Shlez	USA	121,500
11	6	David Gutfreund	USA	97,100
11	7	Rony Halimi	France	114,000
11	8	Owain Carey	UK	165,000

12	1	Dominik Panka	Poland	45,800
12	2	Stephane Gojon	France	129,200
12	3	Dimitar Danchev	Bulgaria	44,800
12	4	Andrius Bielskis	Lithuania	261,000
12	5	Pierre Peretti	France	105,700
12	7	Nikita Nikolaev	Russia	99,500
12	8	Guillaume Diaz	France	142,000

13	1	Emmanuel Nakache	France	34,800
13	2	Luciano Santos De Hollanda	Brazil	69,200
13	3	Jouny Hanna	Sweden	290,000
13	4	Sergio Aido	Spain	146,000
13	5	Eric Meissonnier	France	96,100
13	6	Nathan Gozlan	France	179,500
13	7	Olivier Piechaczyk	France	272,600
13	8	Milan Tomasz Rabsz	Poland	123,100

14	1	Berdugo Saul	France	238,800
14	2	Jan Przysucha	Poland	48,200
14	3	Vladimir Troyanovskiy	Russia	91,600
14	4	Eugene Katchalov	Ukraine	137,000
14	5	Matthieu Lamagnere	France	140,200
14	6	Jerome Arnould	France	245,600
14	7	Saoud Mnahi	Kuwait	187,200
14	8	Georgios Zisimopoulos	Greece	93,100

15	1	Ivan Luca	Argentina	64,300
15	2	Firas Nassar	Lebanon	227,800
15	3	Jean-Louis Perez	France	35,200
15	4	Yannick Chevrier	France	129,600
15	5	Walter Buss	Belgium	192,500
15	6	Gangzhou Hu	France	234,300
15	7	Stefan Schillhabel	Germany	149,100
15	8	Jin Haijing	China	33,000

16	1	Bouali Saiah	France	93,100
16	3	Paul Bertrac	France	172,700
16	4	Luca Giovannone	Italy	92,500
16	5	Guillaume Darcourt	France	172,600
16	6	Bernd Vogelhuber	Germany	91,000
16	7	Ognyan Dimov	Bulgaria	234,400
16	8	Clement Genon-Catalot	France	236,200

17	1	Stepas Tindziulis	Lithuania	70,000
17	2	Paul Berende	Netherlands	78,600
17	3	Kamel Tir	France	132,200
17	4	Stavros Kalfas	Greece	138,200
17	5	Ognjen Sekularac	Serbia	101,700
17	6	Marcin Horecki	Poland	112,000
17	7	Guy Tomaselli	France	13,300
17	8	Gregoire Boissenot	France	53,800

18	1	Jean Pierre Besancon	France	156,300
18	2	Rob Strong	Netherlands	51,600
18	3	Jerome Zerbib	France	134,700
18	4	Rasmus Vogt	Denmark	103,100
18	5	Roberto Gomez Ruiz	Spain	60,400
18	6	[Removed:4]	Germany	40,800
18	7	Lucas Monnier	France	85,300
18	8	Pierre Chevalier	France	221,000

19	1	Adrien Guyon	France	291,100
19	2	Remi Castaignon	France	175,600
19	3	Benjamin Buhr	France	90,300
19	4	Tobias Peters	Netherlands	220,800
19	5	S?ren Ingwart V?hrs	Germany	62,700
19	7	Marina Razuvaeva	Russia	68,900
19	8	Cyril Pusset	France	57,900

20	1	Matti Konttinen	Finland	83,200
20	2	Evangelos Tsairis	Greece	261,700
20	3	Emin Aghayev	Monaco	119,500
20	4	Rhys Jones	UK	63,800
20	5	Joseph Carlino	France	197,800
20	6	Thomas Butzhammer	Germany	46,700
20	7	Aliaksei Boika	Belarus	112,300
20	8	Boutros Naim	Lebanon	170,100

21	1	Jean Wang	France	26,700
21	2	Omar Dahmani	France	289,700
21	4	Sameer Khurana	Poland	160,800
21	5	Matas Cimbolas	Lithuania	53,000
21	6	Bastien Panciarola	France	49,200
21	7	Filippo Lazzaretto	Italy	135,600
21	8	Manuel Andrees Sadornil	Spain	41,100

22	1	Tomasz Cybulski	Poland	163,300
22	2	Ronan Monfort	France	37,500
22	3	David Jaoui	France	217,900
22	4	Moundir Zoughari	France	30,600
22	5	Amir Mozaffarian	Germany	35,400
22	6	Ruben Visser	Netherlands	158,200
22	7	Lionel Rozenberg	France	153,000
22	8	Marton Czuczor	Hungary	208,900

23	1	Pierre Morin	France	260,900
23	2	Jan-Eric Schwippert	Germany	74,700
23	3	Jeremy Ciup	France	116,300
23	4	Georgios Kapalas	Greece	204,400
23	5	Patrice Biton	France	79,400
23	6	Alexander Ivarsson	Sweden	61,500
23	7	Ioannis Angelou-Konstas	Greece	83,800
23	8	Kevin MacPhee	USA	308,300

24	1	Gilbert Diaz	France	155,400
24	2	Jean-Philippe Rohr	France	55,300
24	3	Sebastien Lebaron	France	78,500
24	4	Micha Hoedemaker	Netherlands	170,700
24	5	Oleh Okhotskyi	Ukraine	62,300
24	6	Gilles Huet	France	26,900
24	8	Eric Qu	France	38,000

25	1	Sophie Tayeb	France	29,400
25	2	Alex Tikhoniouk	Ireland	312,600
25	3	Mike Neuens	Luxembourg	25,300
25	4	Pascal Aznar	France	171,400
25	5	Robert Schulz	Germany	296,900
25	6	Jan Boubli	France	84,300
25	7	David Van Den Berg	Netherlands	90,600
25	8	Francois Evard	Switzerland	40,700