The largest-ever European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in the Catalan has seen its third day of action consigned to the record books and it’s the UK’s Tom Middleton who sits on the chip lead with 1.030,000 chips.
Kevin Vandersmissen (970k), Albert Daher (610k), Kent Lundmark (501k), Dragan Kostic (495k), Kevin Iacofano (455k), Martin Staszko (406k), Lukas Berglund (405k), Mike Watson (386k) and Dimitar Danchev (376k) are just a few of the players in the seat draw for Day Four.
In a field consisting of 64 different nationalities you would expect the largest contingent to be from Spain, but it’s Germany that has brought the most players with 11% of the field coming from that part of the world. Igor Kurganov one of the most famous German faces to leave in the first level and Tom Alner and former Nov Niner Jake Balsiger joined him.
With one Nov Niner missing his good fortune there was another who was finding it in droves. Russell Thomas finding the double up no fewer than four times before finally succumbing to the deck as the evening wore on.
With players of the ilk of Dani Stern and Per Linde leaving the competition in Level 16, Mike ‘SirWatts’ Watson started to shift gears and the World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet holder, Angel Guillen, found him too hot to handle when he made way in a flip losing ace-king to the pocket sevens of the Canadian.
Kevin MacPhee suffered the ignominy of a terrible cooler underneath the TV cameras in a hand against Sean Wilson. It was all-in pre flop with MacPhee dominating Wilson: AK v AJ. A king on the flop increasing MacPhee’s advantage, but the board would run out to hand Wilson a Broadway straight leaving MacPhee bemoaning his lack of luck. He would be eliminated a few levels later after running pocket fours into ace-ten.
The recent World Poker Tour (WPT) Merit Cyprus Classic runner up, Albert Daher, took the chip lead and the WSOP bracelet winner Simeon Naydenov fell just short of the money when his pocket nines ran into the pocket tens of Danny Covyn. Then the bubble burst in quite bizarre circumstances when Nuno Da Camara’s last chips went into the middle without him even knowing. Da Camara’s 83,500 stack had blinded down to zero without the player even showing up for Day Three to leave the rest of the players cheering and clapping.
The post bubble action saw Leo Fernandez lose out to Pasi Sormunen JJ v AK, Morten Mortensen going the same way as Naydenov – running nines into the tens of the ever rising Belgian Kevin Vandersmissen; and then we saw Tom Middleton overtake Daher at the top of the counts when he eliminated Grudi Grudev AA v JJ.
Moving into the final levels and that 11% reduced even further when Marvin Rettenmaier and Ole Schemion left the field, Dimitar Danchev found a double up with pocket fives against Max Senft and the former WPT Barcelona winner, Lukas Berglund, eliminated Bo Kjaer Erichsen AK v AJ to see the young Swede starting to move into contention as the day came to a close.
