Last year the EPT Berlin Main Event hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons due to the terrifying armed robbery that took place and the fact that American pro, Kevin “Imalucksac” MacPhee walked away with €1,000,000 for his victory was massively over-shadowed. Fast forward 12 months and EPT Berlin should be remembered for all the right reasons as the 119 remaining players going into Day 3 include some of the biggest names on the European circuit.
A total of 773 players passed through the doors of the Spielbank Casino in Berlin over the two official Day 1s, a change of venue from the Hilton hotel, with 353 players surviving their respective days with chip stacks intact. These players converged yesterday and within just five-and-a-half levels of play they had been whittled down to just 119 players.
The constant stream of exits included the likes of British pros John Eames and James Mitchell along with Sandra Naujoks who won EPT Dortmiund back in 2009. Play then dramatically slowed down as the money bubble, set at 120 players, approached. Sometimes the bubble bursts with very little drama but this was not one of those times as two players were all in at the same time as the screens around the casino showed 121 players remaining.
One of the all ins was on the televised feature table and the player there, Karl Heinz Klose had more chips than the other at-risk player, Andrey Lobzhanidze so his hand was played out first. In that particular had Klose had moved all in with a rather weak looking 9c7s and had run into the pocket aces of Christian Knese. The final board ran out 5d-Jc-9h-4s-2d and Klose was eliminated but had an agonising wait to discover if he would be the unfortunate bubble boy.
Over on the other table the tournament director, Thomas Kremser, announced the action informing the room that Lobzhanidze was holding AcJc and was up against the QcQh of Vladimir Geshkenbein, who won the recent EPT Snowfest. The dealer put out the five community cards and the read 4c-2h-5h-Kh-8c, which sent Lobzhanidze to the rail in 121st place on the virtue that he had less chips at the start of the hand.
At this point the tournament was paused and the players bagged up their precious chips, with French pro Fabrice Soulier almost needing two bags to hold his monster stack of 1,079,400 which is almost 300,000 more than second placed Alessandro Laubinger who has 742,400 chips. Also still in contention of walking away with the title of EPT Berlin Champion and the €825,000 that goes with it are 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate and recent WPT Bratislava winner Roberto Romanello.
The action restarts at 1200 noon Central European Time and play will continue, eight-handed until just 24 players remain.
