Day 3 Completed: Pierre Neuville Leads Final 24
Day 3 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Main Event has come to a close after the 72 players who started the day were reduced to just 24 after a shade over five 75-minute levels. Leading the final 24 into battle when play resumes at 1200 CET on Thursday is Team PokerStars Pro Pierre Neuville who bagged up 780,550 chips.
Neuville is one of the Team Pros from Belgium having formerly being a Friend of PokerStars, promoted this season to mark his ability to seemingly satellite into every EPT Main Event he wants to enter. Although now 69-years of age Neuville showed the so-called young guns how the old school used to do things, slow steady and with amazing efficiency.
He was catapulted to the top of the chip counts after winning a massive pot from defending champion Michael Tureniec, who had slow played pocket aces and allowed Neuville to pair both the king and queen in his hand. Tureniec was unable to let his pocket rockets go and Neuville saw his stack swell to epic proportions. Neuville even passed the 1,000,000 chip mark at one point but lost a little ground towards the end of play.
Hot on Neuville's heels are the likes of Alexander Manson (780,000), Aage Floenes Ravn (681,000) and Alejandro Sanchez Fernandez (620,500).
Neuville will be kept company by a fellow Team Pro in the shape of Martin Staszko (432,500) and Team Online's Mickey Petersen (451,500), the latter coming back from just 7,300 chips with blinds of 1,000/2,000! Quite an achievement.
The players will return to their seats at 1200 CET on Thursday and play will continue until only the final table of eight remain. Can Neuville hang onto his lead or will it be one of the new generation players who knocks him from his lofty perch? Join the Pokernews Live Reporting team tomorrow for all the action from the EPT Copenhagen Main Event.