November 15th, 2008

Mon Dieu…

“Wait…Will there be 4 Winamax players there? It could happen!”…

…no, it won’t happen. Disaster has struck for Jean-Mathieu. Having once been the owner of a 27k stack, the French Winamax player was involved in a few pots that didn’t quite go his way. Eventually pushing all in preflop with Ac 4c only to be called by the table big stack, he was behind after his opponent flipped over his Ah Js . The flop drew a blank, followed by the turn…and as you may have already guessed, the river showed no help. Jean-Mathieu’s first EPT ended after around 6 hours of play. He seemed to still be in high spirits and mentioned that he’ll be at future EPT’s this season.

So we have 3 Winamax players left, Vannesa Thobert holds around 10,5k in chips and appears to also be enjoying her first EPT Main Event. I haven’t seen her without her smile so far! Philippe Taupin has now been moved again to table 2 and took with him around 10k in chips. Bruno De Bari is holding on over on table 5 with about 7,5k in chips and still seems chirpy.

With 63 players left and the blinds up to 200/400 ante 50, it’s going to cost the players about 1k per lap! Our French Qualifiers will no doubt be thinking about this and I’m sure that there will be moves of all shapes and sizes coming in from our players. If they want to make it to Day 2…action will be needed! It’s getting more tense in the tournament and the concentration levels are beginning to loosen up. Can they build on the knowledge they’ve gained so far through the day and inflate their stacks? It’s going to be a pressure filled finish to the day…so don’t go anywhere!