Another day of the EPT Monaco Grand Final main event is in the books. There are now only 34 of 531 players left in the tournament and it starts getting really exciting as the final table is just around the corner.
There are lots of big names left in the tournament, including Steve O'Dwyer, Andrew Pantling, John Juanda, Noah Schwartz, Victor Ramdin, Jason Mercier, Jake Cody, Paul Volpe, Daniel Negreanu, Andrew Lichtenberger, Andrew Chen, Freddy Deeb, Luke Schwartz, Mickey Petersen, Ville Wahlbeck and Norwegian Team PokerStars Pro Johnny Lodden, who remained out front throughout Day 3.
All the remaining players are now guaranteed a minimum payday of €21,500 - with the chance of a bank-busting €1,224,000! We will be back with a final table recap on Monday morning!
About 110 players remain in the EPT Monaco Grand Final Main Event after 2 days of play. Team PokerStars Pro Johnny Lodden pushed past the half a million mark late during Day 2 and finished the day as the chip leader with 605,200. Lodden will be joined by the likes of Calvin Andersen (472,400), Oleksii Kovalchuk (414,700), Noah Schwartz (453,400), Steve O'Dwyer (389,200) and Daniel Negreanu (340,100) to the third day of the tournament.
The remaining players are fighting for a first prize of €1,224,000! The money bubble will burst during day 3 when 80 players remain (€16,000 min cash). We will be back with a bigger update tomorrow. Stay tuned!
A field of 108 took seats at the first day of the European Poker Tour Monaco Grand Final Main Event. At the end of the day there were about 53 players left and Dan Smith (picture) held the lead with 136,500 chips. Other big names that made it through the day with 100k+ stacks were Freddy Deeb, Jake Cody and Paul Volpe.
Day 1A attracted an unusually small field for a Grand Final Main Event (163 players more took part last year), but let's hope that a massive field will show up for Day 1B today! We will be back with another brief update tomorrow morning.
A big congratulations to Mohsin Charania who took home the EPT Monaco Grand Final tonight for amazing €1,350,000 - after a 20-minute heads-up against Lucille Cailly, the first women ever to reach a Grand Final final table! However, Charania really deserved the title as he was playing fantastic poker from start to finish. But but of course he can also thank the poker gods for winning so many all-ins.
EPT Monaco's €25,000 High Roller event attracted 133 players when it started yesterday - the biggest High Roller event ever on the European Poker Tour! The first day lasted 10 one-hour levels and 46 players will return at noon today and play Day 2.
The American poker pro Andrew Badecker leads with a 350,000 stack at the moment. His closest challenger is Vincent van den Fluit with 341,800. There are some big names not far behind (just to mention a few): Sami Kelopuro (310k), Patrik Antonius (307,500) and Phil Ivey (271,500).
The money bubble bursts when 14 players remain. Then all players will be guaranteed at least €60,000 each. The winner will take home €1,080,000 and become a part of poker history since it's the biggest ever EPT High Roller!
Both Day 1a and Day 1b have now been completed and around 400 players will return to the tables today and play Day 2. Nick Yunis from Chile will sit down with the largest stack today (191,700) and his closest opponents are Ivan Kudriavtcev (186,200) and Andoni Larrabe Sánchez (181,300) - all from from Day 1b. Martin Kabrhel, Day 1a chip leader, can now be found in 4th place (167k stack).
Yesterday we reported that Justin Bonomo, who had a huge lead when the final table begun, was playing against Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier and Tobias Reinkemeier for the title and a first prize of €1,640,000!
Bonomo had an enormous chip advantage at this point and it didn't take long before he had knocked out both ElkY and Reinkemeier (his toughest opponent on the final table, according to himself) and was the last man standing.
