The money bubble burst Wednesday at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Berlin Main Event as the field was narrowed from 168 to just 55. As the payouts started at 136, most of the day was played with the participants feeling comfortable that the tournament was at least a profitable one. The chip leader going into the day, Aku Joentausta, also ended Day 3 in that same spot, increasing his chip stack from 751,300 to 1.039 million.
Joentausta is, along with Emil Ohlsson, one of just two players who will go into Thursday’s action with over a million chips. It is a close race at the top of the leader board, though, as three more players have over 900,000.
Our chip leader’s stack actually reached over 1.5 million at one point, but this is poker and nobody wins every hand. One of the big hands that got him to that peak started with Robert Auer raising to 15,000 chips pre-flop. Joentausta followed with a three-bet to 41,000 and then Denis Sagorski four-bet to 100,000. Auer got out of the way, but Joentausta forged ahead, re-raising Sagorski. Sagorski quickly announced that he was all-in and since Joentausta had him covered, the cards were revealed. Sagorski showed K♥-T♥, but Joentausta had him beat with A♦-Q♦. Sagorski flopped a pair of Tens, but Joentausta turned a diamond flush to eliminate his opponent.
According to the PokerNews.com live report, Joentausta appeared very concerned when Sagorski made such an immediate all-in call, figuring he had something much better than K-T. His tablemates thought the same. “I thought you were dead,” Theo Jorgensen told him.
“I was hating myself when he said all-in,” Joentausta told him. “Maybe it’s because of the way I look because nobody ever believes me.”
There are seven tables remaining going into Day 4. The chip leaders are spread out fairly evenly amongst the tables, so there is not any one table that is significantly overweighted in big stacks. There is a table, though, that leans heavily in the direction of small stacks. Table 7, interestingly, has only one player – Marc Witt – with stack taller than the average of 497,455. The other seven players at the table are all under that mark. Table 1 is also light on heavyweights, as only two players have above the average, although they are both pretty big stacks, coming in over 800,000. All the rest at that table are quite small, every single one under 400,000 chips.
Play resumes at noon local time with the plan to play down to sixteen players, or just two tables. Stay tuned.
2013 European Poker Tour Berlin Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
1. Aku Joentausta – 1,039,000
2. Emil Ohlsson – 1,011,000
3. Pascal Vos – 972,000
4. Ramil Yusupov – 958,000
5. Matias Juhani Kesanen – 938,000
6. Roman Herold – 816,000
7. Anaras Alekberovas – 805,000
8. Robert Auer – 781,000
9. Thang Duc Nguyen – 779,000
10. Lasse Christiansen – 761,000
