The field is oh so close to the money at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Monte Carlo Main Event as just 120 players remain after Day 2, with 111 making the money. I have made this comment on several occasions, but the short stacks after Monday’s play might not have gotten much sleep, wondering if coming back today was going to be for naught. One guy who might not have gotten proper z’s but for all the right reasons, is David Peters, who enters Day 3 as the chip leader with a stack of 603,500.
David Peters, to put it bluntly, is a live tournament beast. He has more than $20.5 million in earnings, putting him 15th on the all-time money list. And he didn’t have to win the WSOP Main Event or Big One for One Drop to get there. His biggest cash is $2.309 million and it wasn’t even for a victory – it was a second place finish in the $200,000 Super High Roller at the 2016 WPT National Philippines. More recently, he won more than $1.1 million for only a seventh place finish in Macau’s Super High Roller Bowl.
Peters also has over $5.2 million in recorded online tournament earnings and ranks fifth on the Global Poker Index.
He will be aiming for the €712,000 (approximately $854,000) first prize, which was generated from the 777 entries that created a €3,768,450 prize pool. As mentioned, 111 players will enjoy a payday.
Peters took the chip lead close to the end of the night. According to the PokerStars blog (PokerStars operates the European Poker Tour), he got involved in a couple hands with Lucas Reeves, the second of which was the finishing blow. They ended up getting to the four-bet point pre-flop, each putting in 44,000 chips. They checked it all the way down until the board showed 9-5-8-T-A (all red, heart flush possibility on the river), at which point Peters moved all-in. Reeves was covered and pondered his move for a while, using a timebank card in the process, before calling for 135,000 chips. Peters had A-8 for two pair, while Reeves only made a pair on the river with his A-K. Reeves was out of the tournament just short of the money, while Peters grew his stack to almost 600,000, the largest in the field at the time.
Peters doesn’t have an overwhelming chip lead, holding just over 600,000 chips, but as the closest player has fewer than 500,000, his cushion is certainly comfortable.
