After a long Day Four that saw the field whittled from 39 to 16, it only took six hours on Day Five to determine the European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event’s eight-player final table. Starting Day Four with a huge lead, Jordan Westmorland will still be in the lead for tomorrow’s final table, but his once dominant lead has shrunk to nearly nothing.
The sixteen players came out of the gates quickly on Saturday, almost as if some of them had a plane to catch. Day Three leader Raul Mestre went to battle with Westmorland on one of the first hands, building a sizeable pot on a rather innocent 8-3-7-4-6 board. After checking his option to Westmorland on the river (and seeing Westmorland pop a 325K bet into the pot), Mestre pondered a bit before deciding he didn’t like what he was seeing and folded a pocket pair of Jacks. Even after the hand, Mestre was in decent shape with around 1.5 million in chips while Westmorland added to his lead.
Westmorland would continue to batter his opponents, sending Vincenzo Scarcella out in 16th place when Westmorland’s J-10 off suit caught Scarcella’s A-3 in flopping a Jack, turning a ten and rivering a four-flush. He would give some of those chips back in doubling up Andreas Goeller but, by the end of the first level of the day, he still maintained a dominant lead.
When the fifteen players came back, they quickly started to fall. Giacomo Fundaro was responsible for the first two, taking down Jeffrey Hakim and Alexander Kravchenko when his A-K caught against Hakim’s A-J and Kravchenko’s pocket Jacks. Fundaro also did the job against Stephen Chidwick, who had little to hope for when his pocket fours went against Fundaro’s pocket Queens. To end the second level, Andrea Benelli knocked off Ariel Celestino in 12th place to draw the 11 players closer to the final table.
Once the cards were back in the air, Lukas Berglund would be the next one to leave. He lost most of his chips to Emmanuel Pariset to drop to 185,000 in chips, which went into the pot against Vicky Coren-Mitchell on the next hand. His Q-9 would hit against Coren-Mitchell’s A-5 on a Q-10-3 flop, but Coren-Mitchell would catch up when an Ace came on the turn. Looking for one of five outs, Berglund instead saw a deuce on the river to leave in eleventh place.
After Goeller’s pocket deuces took down a short-stacked Mestre’s K-8 to send Mestre home in tenth, the final nine players came together with one more elimination to go before calling it a day. This would take all of TWO HANDS, which both involved Jorma Nuutinen.
On the first one, Nuutinen entered into a pre-flop raising war with Pariset that eventually ended when Pariset got his chips in the center. After Nuutinen turned up pocket Jacks, Pariset triumphantly showed pocket Aces, which became almost unbeatable on an A-2-7 flop. Nuutinen had some outs, mostly to a runner-runner heart flush draw, but a Jack on the turn ended those and left him with one out. Once a Queen came on the river, Nuutinen was left with only 150,000 in chips, which went to the stack of Coren-Mitchell after she was priced in with a 6-4 against Nuutinen’s A-2 and a six came on the river.
With Nuutinen’s departure, the final table was set:
1. Jordan Westmorland, 3.33 million
2. Giacomo Fundaro, 3.1 million
3. Andreas Goeller, 2.32 million
4. Andrea Benelli, 2.085 million
5. Emmanuel Pariset, 1.94 million
6. Andrija Martic, 1.66 million
7. Bruno Stefanelli, 1.335 million
8. Vicky Coren-Mitchell, 910,000
The entire final table is spaced apart by about the same number of chips that Westmorland’s lead was entering today’s play, making it pretty much anyone’s tournament to win. Many eyes will be on Coren-Mitchell (Vicky married actor/comedian David Mitchell in 2012), who is attempting to do something that has yet to be done on the EPT in becoming a two-time EPT champion. She has her work cut out for her, however, if she’s to come from the short stack.
Play will kick off for the EPT Sanremo Main Event final table at noon on Sunday (5AM Eastern Time U. S.), with the eventual champion taking home the next-to-last title on the EPT’s Season Ten schedule and a €476,100 payday.
