Day 4 of the European Poker Tour’s stop in Deauville, France, is in the books with 16 players remaining in the hunt for the title. Of those men, Sotirios Koutoupas has the best shot as he is one of only two players who have eclipsed the two million chip mark.
41 players came to the felt on Thursday looking to take their next step towards a potential EPT championship. France’s Ekrem Sanioglu was at the head of the pack at the start, but that lead would quickly evaporate. Instead of expanding his chip stack, Sanioglu would disperse his chips around the table, with most of them going to British pro JP Kelly, before he met his tournament end in 28th place.
Kelly continued to slowly build his stack throughout the day’s play, staying out of any big clashes but coming out on top when he did enter into a hand. He wasn’t able to keep up with Koutoupas, however, who started his march up the leaderboard by eliminating Michel Pomaret in a key hand.
After Pomaret opened the betting pre-flop, Koutoupas made the call out of the small blind and the twosome saw an 8-Q-3 flop. Both players would check their options and, after a ten on the turn, Koutoupas pushed out a bet. Pomaret raised Koutoupas’ bet to 60K and, after a moment of contemplation, Koutoupas made the call. On a river four, Koutoupas checked and Pomaret pushed his chips to the center. Koutoupas put together the evidence and didn’t believe Pomaret, calling and showing only a Q-2 for top pair. It was enough as Pomaret only held Big Slick for Ace high and he headed to the exits.
Koutoupas was also the beneficiary of some timely aggression and luck. In a hand against Andrew Sweeney, Koutoupas pushed out a large enough bet on a 9-9-5-5-6 board that would put Sweeney’s tournament life on the line. Sweeney pondered his dilemma for almost five minutes, even saying at one point that Koutoupas had been counterfeited and was looking to steal the pot. In the end, Sweeney pushed his cards to the muck and, as he scooped up the huge pot, showed Sweeney pocket threes that, indeed, had been counterfeited (Sweeney said that he had an Ace that would have taken the hand).
By the time Konstantin Tolokno was eliminated in seventeenth place (for a €27,680 payday), Koutoupas had continued to stack chips to be at the head of the leaderboard going to tomorrow’s Day 5:
1. Sotirios Koutoupas, 2.695 million
2. Chun Ho Law, 2.579 million
3. Tatu Maenpaa, 1.921 million
4. JP Kelly, 1.801 million
5. Florian Ribouchon, 1.719 million
6. Alex Goulder, 1.365 million
7. Oliver Price, 1.275 million
8. Eli Heath, 1.191 million
9. Alexandre Amiel, 1.174 million
10. Eugene Katchalov, 1.002 million
11. Anthony Lerust, 839,000
12. Dimitri Holdeew, 637,000
13. Rustem Muratov, 548,000
14. Jean-Yves Malherbe, 476,000
15. Carlo de Benedittis, 417,000
16. Bahram Chobineh, 327,000
Although he is in the lower half of the ratings, Katchalov has a chance to make history at the EPT Deauville. Katchalov, the holder of a championship on the World Poker Tour and a World Series of Poker bracelet, would become a member of poker’s “Triple Crown” club if he is able to come back to win. Koutoupas, however, isn’t a stranger to deep tournament play; during Season Nine on the EPT, he was the runner up to Ramzi Jelassi at the Prague event.
The 16 survivors will return on Friday to play down to the final eight handed EPT final table. Everyone is guaranteed a €27,680 payday (the next pay jump occurs with Friday’s first elimination, up to €31,000), but all eyes are on the top prize of €614,000 that awaits the champion on Saturday night.