EPT11 Barcelona has broken numerous records this week. It has turned us all into broken records, actually, as we banged on about all of it. But among all of the other landmarks set in Catalonia over the last ten days, one of the crucial least heralded could turn into probably the most significant.
Event #3 of this festival, held the entire long ago at the hours of darkness ages of last Saturday, was a €200 seniors' event, the primary tournament ever hung on the eu Poker Tour open only to players 50 and over. It was won by a little-known German named Hossein Ensan, who picked up €4,535, the most important live cash of his life.
Flash forward nine days and Ensan, who's exactly 50, remains to be playing the push. He's the chip leader going into the general table of the €5,000 buy in Main Event -- the last eight from a field of 1,496 chasing a primary prize of €1,261,000.
If Ensan went directly to win that tomorrow, after which live to 100, he could buy into every seniors' event across the world for the remainder of his life.
Ensan has become the principle story now, if only because this has become a kind of EPT Main Events wherein all the established stars have gradually fallen by the wayside. There have been hundreds of superstars within the field on the start, which have been trimmed to seven former champions and a pair of Red Spades by yesterday morning, and by the point we reconvened today, it was all about Dominik Panka.
If you'll have just one horse, you are able to do so much worse than the reigning PCA champion. But even if he hit a couple of pretty sizeable out-draws this afternoon, even Panka couldn't survive the onslaught of the unknowns and went out in 11th for €77,600.
When the dust cleared on another long day in Casino Barcelona, we were left with the next final table line-up:
Seat 1 - Ji Zhang, Germany, 6,480,000Seat 2 - Kiryl Radzivonau, Belarus, 3,420,000Seat 3 - Slaven Popov, Bulgaria, 3,720,000Seat 4 - Andre Lettau, Germany, 5,405,000Seat 5 - Hossein Ensan, Germany, 10,295,000Seat 6 - Andrea Dato, Italy, 2,825,000Seat 7 - Andrey Shatilov, Russia, 3,675,000Seat 8 - Sam Phillips, USA, 9,035,000
If we scratch the outside even slightly, we find that some others of these eight don't seem to be without reputation either. Shatilov was at a PCA final table the year before Panka, and is a Supernova Elite on PokerStars who buys into these live events with FPPs. It cost him 425,000 of the suckers to get into this event, and he's now guaranteed 121,000 real-world tokens at least.
Sam Phillips, who's originally from the U.S. but now lives in Mexico, could also be a player of a few renown. Phillips, who plays online as buckguy2200, is sweet enough at this game that he charges for training, and those pay him, and he has made greater than $3m in online tournaments since tracking began.
A huge payday tomorrow within the live arena will cement his reputation.
Our overnight leader, Bram Haenraets, didn't quite make it. Having qualified online on PokerStars for a $82 investment, he described yesterday's antics as "surreal". Today's six levels weren't quite as smooth as he would have liked, and he went out at the final table bubble, when he ran ace-ten into Ensan's pocket aces.
It was still something like a dream come true for the Dutchman, however the alarm clock woke him up in the future too soon.
The final table will all be screened on EPT Live tomorrow, broadcast to the sector at 2pm CET. We'll follow the entire action too, including the stuff that usually goes unseen.
Today, our coverage included an enchanting feat of prediction as we tried to figure out the length of the day. Then we met Mark Wagstaff, whose brilliant tournament also came to an end today.
We raised the question of whether it was time to lift the buy in for the principle Event as a monster high roller kicked off, then played throughout the bubble.
We also peered into the minds of Jonathan Little, Griffin Benger and the aforementioned Panka.
And don't forget, before we close for the night, to thank all our wonderful sponsors at the European Poker Tour...
Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: European Poker Tour]
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