Wilinofsky Bags the Chip Lead Again; 259 Go Through in Record-Breaking EPT Barcelona Main Event
After nearly eight hours of poker, the PokerStars European Tour Barcelona Main Event Day 2 has come to an end after the money bubble burst on what was a record-breaking day.
There was a confirmed total of 1,931 entrants to set a new EPT Main Event record and a generated prize pool of €9,365,350 with a first-place prize worth €1,611,500.
A confirmed 259 players will return at noon on Thursday, August, 30 for Day 3 with former EPT Berlin Main Event winner Ben Wilinofsky leading the way with a chip stack worth 850,000. Wilinofsky has been a dominant force since Day 1a where he bagged the overall chip lead then too.
Close behind him is David Petrzelka (771,000), Almedin Imsirovic (723,000), Michal Lubas (712,000) and Tony Broekhof (703,500).
Well-known faces Dominik Panka (603,000), Mark Radoja (511,000), Ben Heath (476,000), Shaun Deeb (363,000), Taylor Black (313,000), Niall Farrell (220,000), Alexandre Reard (216,500), Seth Davies (198,000), Team PokerStars Pro Jaime Staples (196,000), and last year's PokerStars Championship Barcelona winner Sebastian Sorensson (84,000) also found a bag at the end of the night.
Patrik Antonius (310,000) and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom (50,000) will also return for Day 3. The pair has fought storied rivalries online, including an illustrious clash in the biggest online cash game pot of all time worth over 1.3 million dollar. As faith would have it, the former adversaries were seated next to each other on Day 2. Both of them made it through to Day 3, although Blom is still very short. Interestingly enough, the pair has once again drawn the same table and will maybe rekindle some of their old magic on Thursday.
Action of the day
The action got underway at around 12:30 pm local time after a Crazy Pineapple Flip Out hand took place that saw Eric Lenoir get his hands on a coveted $30,000 Platinum Pass, that includes entry to the $25K PokerStars Players NL Hold'em Championship, held in the Bahamas in January 2019.
The Main Event then got cards in the air, and it wasn't before long that Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu got all his chips into the middle and put his tournament life on the line. Negreanu was on the button with ace-ten and called by Kunal Manohar Punjwani with king-nine of clubs. The flop kept Negreanu in the lead but gave Manohar Punjwani a flush draw. The ace on the turn was great for Negreanu, but the river deuce of clubs saw his hopes of a deep run come to an end, and the Canadian departed from the field.
Team PokerStars Pros Jeff Gross, Leo Fernandez, Randy Lew, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Andre Akkari, Maria Konnikova, and Muskan Sethi all did well to make Day 2 but were unable to turn their efforts into a cash.
Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Anthony Zinno, Vojtech Ruzicka, Kitty Kuo, Ivan Luca, Tony Miles,Bryn Kenney, Adrian Mateos, Jack Salter, Tom Middleton and Tom Hall also all came and went throughout the day.
Wilinofsky, who started the day second in the overall chip counts with 330,000, was able to maintain his momentum throughout the day and in one hand even correctly read his opponent's hand before it was revealed to the table. Wilinofsky bet 70,000 on a jack-four-seven-deuce-four board, and Jean Sierra Oddone called and was eliminated when Wilinofsky tabled king-jack. Sierra Oddone mucked, but the dealer was asked to reveal the hand and Wilinofsky corrected read it as jack-ten.
When the bubble loomed, and hand-for-hand play began, and there were three players all at risk, but all survived. Volodymyr Drokin, Ilya Etko, and David Domjan, who was all in for a single small blind, managed to win their respective hands and keep their Main Event dream alive.
Zorlucan Er was then eliminated by Ming Xi after the former ran his pocket queens into pocket aces and got no help from the board, which meant it was pure bubble time.
The unlucky player was to be Guillaume Diaz who found himself all in from the big blind for just 4,000. He would face Adrian State, who had got Niall Farrell to fold on the ace-nine-eight flop. As the crowd and camera crew gathered Diaz flipped over queen-four and needed a lot of help against State's top pair with ace-king. The turn ten card gave Diaz outs, and some of the rail called for a jack on the river, but it was not to be after the eight of clubs fell to confirm Diaz as the bubble boy.
The field then quickly dropped to the remaining 259 who all bagged and tagged for Day 3.
PokerNews will be back on Day 3 to continue coverage of the all the action from the PokerStars EPT Barcelona Main Event.
