There’s almost nothing that can surprise the seasoned EPT watcher, and yet the rate of attrition on Day 2 always startles anew.
We started today at the Grand Connaught Rooms by adding the name of seven new players to our overnight tally – latecomers to this £4,250-ticket party, who bought themselves a stack of 30,000 chips. They took the total field to 675, but by the time the fortunate among them had played through six levels, only about 130 remained.
Tomorrow afternoon’s first order of business will be to burst the bubble, which will occur when only 95 are left. And after that, everybody can strap in and hope to edge closer to the £499,700 first prize, which will be handed over with the latest EPT London title.
A large contributing factor to the rate at which they went bust today was the identity of the players with all the chips. At various points, Anatoly Filatov, Benny Spindler, Theo Jorgensen, Liv Boeree, Johnny Lodden, Sam Trickett, Sergio Aido, Simon Deadman, Niall Farrell and Kevin MacPhee had the big stacks, which is always going to mean fireworks.
By the time the survivors of the widespread catastrophe were asked to bag their chips, most of the aforementioned bosses were still well stacked. However, Raffaele Sorrentino, who has close to $150,000 in live tournament winnings but for whose name a Google search returns a Doorman and Concierge Service, was at the very top of all of them. He will carry 419,500 into Day 3 tomorrow.
(The business isn’t his, but poker’s Raffaele Sorrentino certainly showed enough people the door.)
Here’s a list of some of the other notables. It’s still anyone’s game, with a pretty dense concentration of the game’s big stars.
Raffaele Sorrentino – 491,400
Sebastian Pauli – 419,500
David Cabrera – 418,500
Jareth East – 395,000
Sergio Aido – 357,700
Simon Deadman – 345,900
Artur Koren – 343,300
Salman Behbehani – 334,900
Alexande Trevallion – 334,500
Anatoly Filatov – 318,400
Ezequiel Macho – 307,000
Johnny Lodden – 285,400
Marco Caza – 281,800
Kevin MacPhee – 277,700
Jake Cody – 269,400
Francis Foord-Brown – 251,100
Liv Boeree — 230,300
Niall Farrell – 201,600
Marc-Andre Ladouceur – 201,400
Benny Spindler – 162,900
Mickey Petersen – 141,900
Chris Moorman — 135,200
Leo McClean – 129,100
John Gale – 111,900
Sam Trickett – 106,000
Eugene Katchalov – 86,100
Bertrand Grospellier – 71,900
David Vamplew – 59,500
Fatima Moreira de Melo – 56,400
Jan Sjavik – 33,000
To be honest, there are some pretty handy names scattered among the wreckage too. Victoria Coren Mitchell had one of those days. Not one of those days, but one of those days, which ended back at home before bagging was done.
Jorgensen also trudged off the TV table late in the day, the same TV table from which he had banished Daniel Colman earlier. Ike Haxton, Dominik Panka, Davidi Kitai, Christoph Vogelsang, Marvin Rettenmaier, Ana Marquez, Viktor Blom and the defending champion, Robin Ylitalo are all now free to head to Coren’s house too. (She has quite the home game on a Tuesday.)
Let’s allow those folk the dignity of their privacy for the rest of the week, however, and focus on what we still have left. It’s going to remain a thrill ride from the starting whistle tomorrow at noon.
Follow our coverage of the EPT London festival via the main EPT London page, where there are hand-by-hand updates and chip counts in the panel at the top and feature pieces below. And, of course, you can follow it all live at EPT Live.
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