The 2014 European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague Main Event has sped through three days and more than one thousand eliminations as the tournament heads into Monday’s Day 4. Leading the way after Day 3 is Sweden’s Simon Mattsson with 1,790,000 chips, but American Stephen Graner is nipping on his heels with 1,713,000 chips of his own. While it is always still “anybody’s game” when there are 61 players left in a tournament, when the top two players are separated by just eight big blinds, it really is anybody’s game at this point.
Graner would have been the one on top had Day 3 ended only a few minutes earlier. On the second to last hand of the night, Mattsson made a huge move to catapult himself to the top of the standings. According to PokerNews.com, Mattsson and Miha Travnik got into it pre-flop with Travnik eventually getting all of his 300,000 chips into the middle with A-K and Mattsson calling him with T-T. The community cards ending up being Q-7-5-7-2 and while Travnik did get a brief flush sweat, he was ultimately unable to find any synergies between his hole cards and the board, resulting in his ouster.
Mattsson’s largest live tournament cash came just this summer when he finished third in a side event at EPT Barcelona, winning €37,900 ($50,019). He is already guaranteed more than a third of that just for making it this far, but he will still need to make the top 13 for this to become the best cash of his career. Overall, TheHendonMob.com shows that he has won nearly a quarter million dollars in live tourneys. He has no victories, but has made several final tables.
Sunday was also the day the money bubble burst in the tournament. 159 players got paid, but of course, one has to be tortured with coming so close, yet so far from cashing. That man was Christian Favale, who had the unfortunate experience of having his A-K run into Mustapha Kanit’s pocket Aces. Unlike Travnik above, Favale didn’t even get a sweat, though maybe it was for the better, as it never fun to get one’s hopes up only to have them dashed.
Action has already gotten underway in Day 4 across the pond. Everyone is essentially freerolling at this point, as all players have made the money. Play will go on until just 24 players remain.
2014 European Poker Tour Prague Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
1. Simon Mattsson – 1,790,000
2. Stephen Graner – 1,713,000
3. Davidi Kitai – 1,364,000
4. Jonathan Wong – 1,295,000
5. Petr Jelinek – 1,191,000
6. Militiadis Kyriakides – 1,178,000
7. Bjorn Wiesler – 1,084,000
8. Pablo Sanz Quiles – 1,075,000
9. Francesco Grieco – 1,054,000
10. Vanessa Selbst – 1,007,000
