PokerStars European Poker Tour London Day 4: Aaron Gustavson Takes a Commanding Chip Lead
Three tables of eight players returned for Day 4 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour London Main Event including World Series of Poker champion Peter Eastgate and former WSOPE champion Annette Obrestad; however, it was Aaron Gustavson who finished as chip leader when they bagged the chips with eight players remaining.
Martin Gudvangen started the day by knocking out Phillip Byers in a coin-flip situation and he continued his good form, busting Theo Tran next with jacks holding against Tran's big slick. While Obrestad's reputation proceeded her as people aggressively pursued her stack, this young Norwegian was forced to eventually make a move, running A-T into Eastgate's jacks before being finished off by Ivo Donev with A-K against her K-Q.
Kevin Schaffel, one of the famed November Nine, ran out of luck in today's competition when his deuces couldn't come from behind against Dominic Cullen's sevens. No doubt he'll be focusing his energy on the WSOP final table in a few weeks.
Michael Berry had caused something of a stir during Day 3 — the chip leader was a freeroll winner in with PokerStars and the Daily Mirror. This self-confessed amateur started off well but found himself gradually becoming more and more outmatched by his opponents. Eventually, he put all his chips in the middle while still deep with 3-3 against Gustavson's J-J, allowing the latter to become a huge chip leader. Berry though, still took home £19,000, though his first word after being knocked off the feature table was, “Stupid.”
Hyperaggressive German Benny Spindler, who the reporting team discovered looked exactly like the "emo smiley" emoticon on Skype, saw his stack go up and down faster than a yo-yo. Eventually though, he stayed down losing the classic 57%-43% match-up to former Irish Open winner Marty Smyth. Smyth himself went out in tenth place, pushing with a weak ace from the big blind but being defeated by small blind Raymond Wu's 7-7.
With one table, it became a case of who would survive? Eastgate, Cullen, Senniger, Bennani and Vivek Rajkumar all were in for their tournament lives while they played nine-handed. All survived, however, until Cullen eliminated Rajkumar when the last remaining British player's A-Q won out over the former World Poker Tour champion's K-J to give us our final table.
Chip Counts (By Stack Size):
1. Aaron Gustavson - 7,140,000
2. Peter Eastgate - 3,535,000
3. Martin Gudvangen - 3,510,000
4. Nikolai Senninger - 2,175,000
5. Dominic Cullen - 2,105,000
6. Raymond Wu - 1,535,000
7. Rui Milhomens - 1,100,000
8. Karim Bennani - 845,000
Join PokerNews tomorrow for coverage of the final table at noon local time. Be sure to follow us on Twitter also for up-to-the-minute news.
