The Season 10 European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Barcelona has breezed through it’s second day of action and the PokerStars Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT) Chile champion, Alexander Tavitian, leads the remaining 235 players with 465,000 chips.
The day started with 697 players remaining from the two starting flights and EPT8 runner up, Dragan Kostic, started as the chip leader with 215,000. Although Kostic was not able to maintain that lead, he did find his way into the Day Three seat draw after finishing on 270,000.
1,234 entrants makes EPT10 Barcelona the largest-ever main event to be held in the Catalan, and a €5,984,900 prize pool means there will be a mind blowing €1,067,000 reserved for first prize.
The story of the second day revolved around the exits of so many top quality performers. Former EPT Copenhagen winner, Mickey Petersen, eliminated the Global Poker Index (GPI) world number one, Jason Mercier, but his success would be short lived, as the Dane would be walking out of the door a few levels later.
Eugene Katchalov lost a three way all-in when his pocket kings ran into the pocket aces of Max Greenwood, and ace-king of Dainius Ulke. The aces held up, Katchalov was out and Ulke crippled. Ulke never recovered and was eliminated later in the day, whilst Greenwood finished the day on 151,900 chips.
Marvin Rettenmaier and Jake Cody found early double ups but as the German managed to get through the day with 90,800, Cody was unable to sustain that momentum and would fall by the wayside as the action heated up.
Joining Cody on the rail was the Team PokerStars Sportstar Fatima Moreira De Melo. The Olympic gold medalist losing a flip against the Englishman Jack Salter. Jonathan Duhamel making it a triple PokerStars elimination when he ran ace-ten into the ace-king of Timofey Kuznetsov.
Dan Smith, James Dempsey, Fabrice Soulier and Stephen Chidwick were also eliminated in the first two levels and Max Lykov, Gaelle Baumann and Marcel Luske would join them after Level Ten.
The Barcelona center half, and beau of superstar Shakira, Gerard Pique, was also eliminated in Level Ten when his middle pin was bowled over by the flush of Carlos Alvarez, and his fellow countrywomen Ana Marquez joined him soon after.
David Vamplew continued his impressive run of form with a third place finish in the €2k side event the night prior. A €35,000 prize meaning the Scot barely got any shut-eye, and he paid the price with an exit in Level 11. The quality of Jens Kyllonen, Juha Helppi, Luca Pagano and Fabian Quoss also leaving the competition in the 11th level of the day.
So Tavitian has the chip lead, but there are plenty of amazing players still left in the field and a very long way to go. The recent World Series of Poker (WSOP) $3k runner-up Niall Farrell has 444,000, WPT Merit Cyprus Classic runner up Albert Daher has 420,500 and EPT7 Barcelona winner Kent Lundmark has 362,100. With Dragan Kostic, Lukas Berglund, Mike Watson, Kevin MacPhee, Simeon Naydenov, Victor Ramdin, David Benefield and Shannon Shorr still in the field, it’s going to be dog eat dog all the way to the wire.
