Gieles Leads Final Table; Juanda and Urbanovich Among Stiff Competition
Day 2 of the 2015 PokerStars.com European Prague Season 12 €50,000 Super High Roller saw six players take advantage of late registration, which brought the total field up to 56 (46 unique; 10 reentries), an increase over last year's 51 total entries. That created a prize €2,688,840 prize pool that will be distributed to the top eight players with the eventual winner taking home €806,650.
After nearly eight levels of play on Day 2, the final eight were set with the Netherlands' Luuk Gieles, who began the day as the chip leader, and his stack of 2.556 leading the way. Others still in contention – each of who are guaranteed a €107,550 payday – include Steve O'Dwyer, Sam Greenwood, Igor Kurganov, Daniel Dvoress, Thomas Muehloecker, reigning EPT Player of the Year Dzmitry Urbanovich, and EPT12 Barcelona Main Event champ John Juanda.
The day kicked off a with a slew of eliminations including those of defending champ Leonid Markin; Mike "Timex" McDonald, who took down the EPT12 Malta €25,000 High Roller two months back; World Series of Poker bracelet winner Ivan Luca; 2014 WCOOP champ Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz; Aleksandr Denisov, who qualified in a satellite the night before; and the sole Team PokerStars Pro in the field, Jason Mercier.
Mercier fell in Level 11 (5,000/10,000/1,000) after Dvoress opened for 21,000 under the gun and Mercier three-bet all in for 136,000 from the hijack. Action folded back to Dvoress, who paused for a few moments before making the call with pocket sixes. Mercier held two overs with king-queen, but he failed to get there after the board ran out lowly cards.
From there, Stephen Chidwick ran nines into the pocket queens of Greenwood to bust, and not long after Tobias Reinkemeier lost a flip with ace-queen to the pocket tens of Anthony Zinno, who according to the Global Poker Index's Eric Danis needed to finish in third place or better to overtake Byron Kaverman for the lead in the GPI Player of the Year race.
Speaking of Kaverman, he made a deep run in the tournament, but busted in Level 13 (8,000/16,000/2,000) after suffering a bad beat. It happened when he raised before the flop and Urbanovich three-bet to 77,000. Action folded back to Kaverman, who moved all in for 285,000. Urbanovich hit the tank, and eventually called with ace-ten offsuit, which was behind Kaverman's pocket queens. However, an ace appeared on the flop, and that was all she wrote for Kaverman.
With ten players remaining, Ole Schemion got his stack in holding a king-high flush draw, but found himself dominated by Greenwood's ace-high flush draw. Schemion failed to get lucky and found himself on the rail in 10th place. With nine remaining, both the money and final table bubbles were in full effect.
Unfortunately for Zinno, his dream of earning coveted GPI POY points came up one spot shy when he got his short stack all in preflop holding ace-jack only to run into the ace-queen of Urbanovich. No jack would come, and a disappointed Zinno made his way to the exit.
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | 1,152,000 |
| 2 | Thomas Muehloecker | Austria | 1,256,000 |
| 3 | Luuk Gieles | The Netherlands | 2,556,000 |
| 4 | Steve O'Dwyer | Ireland | 2,277,000 |
| 5 | Dzmitry Urbanovich | Poland | 2,397,000 |
| 6 | Igor Kurganov | Russia | 1,497,000 |
| 7 | Sam Greenwood | Canada | 2,223,000 |
| 8 | John Juanda | Indonesia | 643,000 |
The third and final day will kick off at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday with 19:41 remaining in Level 16 (15,000/30,000/4,000), and play will continue until a winner is crowned. There won't be a live stream of the event, but you'll be able to follow the updates all day long right here on PokerNews. In addition, the EPT12 Prague Main Event kicks off tomorrow with Day 1a, so we'll also be brining you live updates from that event.
While you wait, check out this video of the chip leader weighing in on the recent changes on PokerStars: