The second-largest World Series of Poker Europe (WSOP Europe) Main Event of all time moves into Day 4 as just 42 of the original 541 entries remain in the field. Julien Martini is the chip leader after three days with nearly 6 million chips.
Martini is well ahead of the pack; Dario Sammartino is more than 2 million chips behind, bagging up 3.897 million chips. Felix Schulze is the only other player with more than 3 million and just three players have more than 2 million.
Should Sammartino navigate the rest of the way to make the final table, he would end up reaching the final tables of both the traditional World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas and the WSOP Europe Main Event. He finished second in the Main Event this summer to Hossein Ensan, who himself almost won another bracelet at WSOP Europe.
As great of an accomplishment as the double Main Event final table would be, you may find it interesting that three players have already pulled off the feat. Ivan Demidov did it in 2008 and then two players – James Akenhead and Antoine Saout – both did it in 2009.
Martini, the chip leader, has nearly $4.25 million in live tournament earnings. The bulk of that came from a second place finish in this year’s $25,000 PokerStars Players Championship, where he won $2.974 million.
One of Martini’s big hands relied on a bit of luck. He and Paulius Vaitiekunas got it all-in pre-flop, Martini with A-T and his opponent with A-K. The first four cards came out 9-8-7-6, giving Martini a straight and knocking out Vaitiekunas, who began the day of the chip leader. That took Martini’s stack up to almost 4 million chips.
Later, he added more than a million chips when he turned a straight with 2-5 and got a huge check-raise call on the river.
Shortly thereafter, Martini had Kings and called Jacob Baumgartner’s 431,000 chip all-in. Baumgartner had Queens and got no help from the dealer, hitting the rail just before the end of the day.
The World Series of Poker Europe Main Event will resume on Tuesday, October 29, at noon local time in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. The plan is to get through six to seven levels. Blinds will begin at 12,000/24,000 with a 24,000 chip big blind ante.
2019 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
- Julien Martini – 5,959,000
- Dario Sammartino – 3,897,000
- Felix Schulze – 3,079,000
- Jorma Nuutinen – 2,822,000
- Rifat Palevic – 2,800,000
- Anthony Zinno – 2,381,000
- Jan-Peter Jachtmann – 1,879,000
- Daniel Rezaei – 1,852,000
- Harry Ross – 1,628,000
- Michal Lubas – 1,457,000
