Level: 32
Blinds: 80,000/16,000
Ante: 20,000
2014 PokerStars.com EPT Season 11 Barcelona
€5,300 Main Event
Day: 6
The poker world will be taken over by a new PokerStars television show called 'The Shark Cage', and we've got some exclusive footage for you! Team PokerStars Pros Jason Mercier and Fatima Moreira de Melo share their experiences, as do table talker extraordinaire Sam Grafton and former EPT winner Mike McDonald.
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Season 11 of the European Poker Tour sponsored by PokerStars.com kicked off in fine style with a record number of entrants for an EPT in Europe. A field of 1,496 generated a prize pool of €7,255,600 with 239 players getting paid and the winner is set to receive €1,261,000.
With the final table of eight set to play down to a winner today it won’t be long before we know just who will be walking away with that huge pay day and the title of EPT 2014 Barcelona champion.
Hossein Ensan begins the day as chip leader, having won his seat via a live satellite as well as taking down the inaugural EPT Seniors event only days ago. Ensan is one of three German players to have made it through to the official final table of eight, the others being third placed amateur Ji Zhang and Andre Lettau, an online professional, who lies in fourth.
Samuel “buckguy 2200” Phillips is another online professional who has over $3,000,000 cashes to his name. Phillips is the sole American left in the field and this is his biggest live cash of his poker career.
Coverage of the final table with hole cards begins at 2 p.m. today and PokerNews will bring you all the action on the way to crowning the first champion of the season. We hope you’ll join us then and stay with us in what is sure to be a hard fought and dramatic final day of play.
The final table will start at 1 p.m. local time, live stream and coverage here on PokerNews.com will start on a one hour delay, so expect reporting to start in just over two hours.
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ji Zhang | Germany | 6,480,000 |
| 2 | Kiryl Radzivonau | Belarus | 3,420,000 |
| 3 | Slaven Popov | Bulgaria | 3,720,000 |
| 4 | Andre Lettau | Germany | 5,405,000 |
| 5 | Hossein Ensan | Germany | 10,295,000 |
| 6 | Andrea Dato | Italy | 2,825,000 |
| 7 | Andrey Shatilov | Russia | 3,675,000 |
| 8 | Samuel Phillips | United States | 9,035,000 |
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
10,295,000 | |
|
||
|
9,035,000 | |
|
6,480,000 | |
|
5,405,000 | |
|
3,720,000 | |
|
3,675,000 | |
|
3,420,000 | |
|
2,825,000 | |
Ji Zhang works as an IT engineer and only plays poker as a hobby, but that could all change today if he smashes a life-changing score in this Main Event. Primarily a cash-game player at Casino Baden-Baden, this is only Li's second European Poker Tour event. Back in Season 9, Li played EPT Berlin.
Zhang only has one very small result on his record — a £500 score from June 2014 — but he's already locked up well over €100,000 to add to his bankroll.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
6,480,000 |
Kiryl Radzivonau worked as programmer for two years before becoming a professional poker player. He started playing in 2008 in low-limit hold’em cash games, but now mainly plays multi-table tournaments. He is now ranked No. 5 in the Belarusian all-time money list, with more than $800,000 in lifetime tournament winnings.
In June 2012, he beat a 5,776-strong field to take down the PokerStars Sunday Million for $166,076. His best live result was winning the Russian Poker Tour event in Kyiv for €75,000, but he has notched up most of his live cashes in Kyrenia in Cyprus.
This Barcelona event is his second EPT, having also played EPT Vienna last season.
He is married with a five-year-old daughter and comes into the final table second to last in chips.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
3,420,000 |
With nine players left in this 100th European Poker Tour stop, Slaven Popov almost went out on the final table bubble, having lost close to half his chips when Bram Haenraets cracked his kings with 
. Popov later hit a lucky double up of his own with his ace-Jack beating Andrey Shatilov’s kings and got right back into the game.
Popov has been playing poker for around 10 years and is now a professional ranked No. 9 on the Bulgarian all-time money list. He has been a Supernova on PokerStars for two years now, and plays both live and online in multi-table tournaments with a string of good results.
Online, his big cashes include winning a 2012 $1,050 SCOOP event for $560,019 and fifth in a $2,100 SCOOP earlier this year for $108,158. He started playing EPT events in Season 10, and Popov is a popular figure in Bulgaria’s poker community where he writes lots of blogs, including articles for PokerNews.
His best live result was seventh place in an event in Las Vegas two years ago for $62,554. His best EPT result was runner-up to Juan Maceiras in an EPT side event for €21,380. He also made the final table of the 2012 Eureka Bulgaria Main Event for €17,300.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
3,720,000 |
Andre Lettau is well known in the German poker community and he is also an online coach. Lettau rarely plays live — this is his first EPT — but he has a string of online results including winning a SCOOP event for $65,062.
He is currently living in Vienna and enters the final table fourth in chips.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
5,405,000 |
Hossein Ensan has already had notable success here in Barcelona by taking down the European Poker Tour's first-ever event for seniors. He turned 50 in May, so he was eligible to compete in the €200 event where he went on to beat an 85-player field for the €4,535 first prize. His good forture continued when he won his €5,300 seat to the Main Event in a live satellite, one of 63 players to qualify on site — a PokerStars record for a live super satellite.
Originally from Iran, Ensan moved to Germany when he was 25 and now lives in Münster. His home casino is Dortmund-Hohensyburg, where the EPT was held in Seasons 3-5.
Ensan started playing poker 10 years ago, but still considers himself an amateur. He started playing live tournaments in 2013, but only plays major events if he wins his seat. He has substantial success in smaller buy-in events, including two €300 side-event final tables during EPT Berlin in Season 9, and his dream is to compete at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
With the chip lead coming into the final table and already a hefty payday locked up, Ensan's dream of a trip to the WSOP could just be a couple of travel bookings away.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
10,295,000 | |
|
|
||
Italian pro Andrea Dato has been playing European Poker Tour events for years, but his best live result came in March when he won World Poker Tour Venice to the tune of €104,822. This took his live tournament winnings to over the $1,000,000 mark.
Dato, currently No. 15 on the Italian all-time money list, cashed in four World Series of Poker events during the summer and also went deep in the record-breaking Estrellas Barcelona €1,100 Main Event, finishing 52nd from a 2,560-strong field for €6,357.
His best EPT result before this event was a fourth-place finish in the FPS High Roller during EPT Deauville for €51,500.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
|
2,825,000 |