In golf, it’s called “moving day” when the players look to make their moves towards the top of the leaderboard to contend for a championship. Poker has that itself, especially once the money bubble bursts and the short stacked players look to get the best cash out for their tournament buy-in investment and the big stacks look to get richer in pursuit of the title. Day 3 at the European Poker Tour’s Prague stop was “moving day” for many of the players, with professional Ludovic Lacay being the biggest mover of all to the top of the standings.
189 players returned to the felt at the Hilton Prague on Sunday with the distasteful task of deciding who among them would get nothing for their previous two days’ labor. With only 151 players taking down cash in the tournament, 38 players would have that empty feeling in their wallet. Over the span of the first two levels of play, competitors such as David Williams, Martin Staszko and defending champion Marcin Wydrowski were among those to go and, once Alexander Lakhov was eliminated on the bubble, the survivors were all in the money.
At this point, the lead was in the hands of Jonathan Little, who had maintained his starting day stack of around 470K while Day 2 chip leader Walid Bou Habib dropped down the ladder. The short stacks that had eked into the money began to drop at this point, including Kitty Kuo, Paul Volpe, 2013 World Series of Poker “November Niner” Sylvain Loosli, Thomas Pedersen and Taylor von Kriegenbergh.
As the action slipped into the evening hours, one of the chip leaders from Day 2 play exited and a new contender stepped into his shoes. Amir Lehavot and Stephen Chidwick got into a pre-flop raising war that eventually ended when all of Lehavot’s chips were in the center and Chidwick had very few left in front of him. Chidwick held the lead with his pocket Queens over Lehavot’s Big Slick in the classic race and the 10-8-9-9 flop and turn didn’t help either player. The final nail for Lehavot came on the Queen river, giving Chidwick the hand, eliminating Lehavot and catapulting Chidwick into the stratosphere of the leaderboard where he would spend the rest of the night.
While Chidwick was riding high, another member of the Day 2 leaderboard was also rapidly ascending the table. Ludovic Lacay, who had started the day in 25th place, became the first player to crack the magical one million chip mark and take over the lead from Chidwick. Chidwick, in the meantime, saw some of his chips slip away from him in doubling up Max Silver, but he would fight back to have a decent stack by the end of the night. Lacay continued to silently increase his chips stack as the day came to a close and he’ll enjoy a nearly 600K chip lead over his closest opponent when the cards hit the air on Monday:
1. Ludovic Lacay, 1,700,000
2. Julian Track, 1,187,000
3. Lasell King, 1,075,000
4. Ole Schemion, 1,030,000
5. Ihar Soika, 957,000
6. Ciaran Burke, 889,000
7. Ana Marquez, 870,000
8. Stephen Chidwick, 869,000
9. Georgios Sotiropoulos, 839,000
10. Vit Blachut, 826,000
Among the 61 players that made it through Day 3, players such as Andrew Chen (650K), Day 1A chip leader Tiberu-Florian Georgescu (643K), Silver (554K), Yury Gulyy (479K) and Ari Engel (459K) are all above the chip average. Jonathan Roy (217K), Samuel Chartier (115K) and Little (112K) will have their work cut out for them on their shorter stacks.
The appearance of Schemion on the EPT Prague leaderboard could have an effect on several of the Player of the Year races in the poker world. While Daniel Negreanu has led for quite some time, Schemion is within striking distance of Negreanu should Schemion win this tournament (he also will more than likely take over the EPT Season Ten Player of the Year race with this performance). It sets up for what will be an exciting (and probably quick) Day 4 that will commence in just a few hours.