For the second day in a row, the targeted number of remaining players in the 2014 European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague Main Event was a bit off from reality. On Day 4, the goal was to get down to 24 players, but the field was whittled by two extra players by the end of the night. Yesterday, it the night was supposed to conclude with just six players left, but at the end of the fifth level of play there were still seven. But hey, the more the merrier today as the tournament makes its way down to a champion, right? Right.
If you looked at the chip standings entering final table play without knowing anything else about the tournament, you would think that American Stephen Graner had cruised. With 12,405,000 chips, he is nearly 5,000,000 ahead of the second place competitor, Anton Bertilsson. He has almost as many chips as the third through seventh place players combined. Just a dominating position.
But this tournament has not been easy for him. He entered Monday’s Day 4 second in chips and ended that way, as well, but he had a heck of a time trying to remain on his feet. He hit a very rough patch in the middle of the day where absolutely nothing went right; it looked like he might not make it to Day 5. But he got a little lucky near the end of the day, rivering a key card against Vanessa Selbst, and was able to stabilize his chip stack.
His big move of Day 5 came during Level 27 when, according to PokerNews, he got into a raising battle pre-flop with Andras Nemeth, who was one of the chip leaders at the time. The two raise and re-raised each other until Nemeth finally shoved with Q♠-Q♣ and Graner called with A♣-K♣. The board ran out J♦-3♠-J♣-T♣-7♣, giving Graner the flush and a massive pot.* That launched Graner all the way up to 7,320,000 and the chip lead.
From there, Graner did pretty much cruise, enjoying many more ups than downs before calling it a night.
The final table is now underway in Prague as the seven finalists gun for the €969,000 first prize.
2014 European Poker Tour Prague Main Event – Final Table Chip Counts
1. Stephen Graner – 12,405,000
2. Anton Bertilsson – 7,740,000
3. Fabio Sperling – 4,710,000
4. Bjorn Wiesler – 3,285,000
5. Simon Mattsson – 2,130,000
6. Jonathan Wong – 1,900,000
7. Remi Castaignon – 1,030,000
*PokerNews reported that Graner had the Queens and Nemeth had A-K, but considering how the hand turned out, we assume that was an inadvertent transposition of the hole cards.
