Fabio Sperling Leads After Day 4, Vanessa Selbst in 5th with 22 Left

Germany's Fabio Sperling is the man to catch at the end of Day 4 here at the EPT 11 Prague Main Event. Sperling bagged up 4,357,000 after five levels of play to top the 22 players still in contention.

Stephen Graner from the USA is in second with 3,228,000 chips. Fellow American Vanessa Selbst will enter Tuesday fifth in chips, and likeable British pro Sam Grafton is in third. Grafton is from the U.K. but has recently made Prague his home. The popular “SquidPoker” spent the day talking up a storm and pouting his way to finish with 2,610,000.

Day 4 began with 61 players, and losing the first 30 happened very quickly. Team PokerStars Pro George Danzer finished in 53rd for €16,970 after losing a flip with fours against the ace-queen of Tamer Kamel. The eliminations slowed a little after the first flurry of exits, with the average stack then around 80 big blinds, but the field was gradually whittled down to the 22 by the time the day ended.

Sperling grabbed the chip lead from Graner when they got to the river of a board reading . Graner bet 215,000 and the faced a raise to 628,000 from Sperling. Graner asked him if he had flopped a set, and he would get his answer when he called and was shown Sperling’s for a full house.

This is Graner’s first EPT; his best live result is a sixth-place finish in the 2014 WSOP Millionaire Maker event for $273,854. His total live tournament winnings amount to $676,642.

Selbst is the last remaining Team PokerStars Pro in the tournament and she endured a few swings but stuck to her game plan on her way to a fifth place end-of-day finish securing 2,040,000 chips.

It was an impressive display of aggressive big bet poker from Selbst, who rarely gave up on a pot when there were chips to be won and she frequently put her opponents to the test on the river.

One player Selbst tangled with repeatedly was Panagiotis Papaisidorou. In one memorable hand Selbst called a 44,000 bet on a flop of from Papaisidorou and when the turn card brought the she raised a 180,000 bet to 370,000. Papaisidorou called that bet and checked the river only to face a bet of 190,000 from Selbst. He called and mucked when Selbst showed him .

David Kitai briefly held the chip lead and he finished in fourth place with 2,307,000, while Simon Mattsson, who started the day as chip leader, ended with 1,172,000. Nandor Solyom will return as the short stack with 182,000 after losing a flip to Francesco Grieco just before the day ended.

Online qualifier Brian Altman was the chip leader at the end of Day 2 but at one point today he was down to one big blind. A series of improbable double ups, including cracking aces with king-deuce all in preflop, saw him escape elimination several times before he finally bust in the very last hand of the night to finish 23rd for a €32,270 payday.

Play resumes on Tuesday at noon CET and the plan is to play down to the final six. The tournament is just two days away from crowning an eventual champion from this record breaking field in Prague and the winner will take home a huge €969,000 payday.

Day 5 Table and Seat Draw

Table	Seat	Name	Country	Chips
1	1	Artem Metalidi	Ukraine	1,065,000
1	2	Sergey Lebedev	Russia	678,000
1	3	Nandor Solyom	Romania	182,000
1	4	Jonathan Wong	UK	1,216,000
1	6	Vanessa Selbst	USA	2,040,000
1	7	Davidi Kitai	Belgium	2,307,000
1	8	Simon Mattsson	Sweden	1,172,000

2	1	Remi Castaignon	France	1,385,000
2	2	Andras Nemeth	Hungary	1,813,000
2	4	Francesco Grieco	Italy	1,215,000
2	5	Thomas Butzhammer	Germany	320,000
2	6	Pascal Pflock	Germany	671,000
2	7	Sam Grafton	UK	2,610,000
2	8	Stephen Graner	USA	3,228,000

3	1	Balazs Botond	Hungary	1,248,000
3	2	Jakub Slemr	Czech Republic	1,278,000
3	3	Roman Pavliuk	Ukraine	608,000
3	4	Anton Bertilsson	Sweden	1,131,000
3	5	Tamer Kamel	UK	1,304,000
3	6	Fabio Sperling	Germany	4,357,000
3	7	Bjorn Wiesler	Germany	1,504,000
3	8	Miltiadis Kyriakides	Greece	1,900,000