Eichhardt Leads Final 36 Hopefuls Into Penultimate Day
The biggest European Poker Tour main event of all time saw another exciting day of poker come and go, and it was Peter Eichhardt from Sweden who bagged up the chip lead with 4.36 million.
At the end of Day 4, there were two former champions in the hunt for their second title; Ukrainian Oleksii Khoroshenin bagged up 2.325 million, and Frederik Jensen took 2.28 million to Day 5 after making an amazing call for all his chips right before the end of the night.
The fourth day of play started with 110 players, including Team PokerStars Pros Andre Akkari (445,000) and Matthias De Meulder (840,000), both of whom managed to survive another day of poker. Akkari's best EPT main event finish was a 23rd-place result last season in Monte Carlo, while De Meulder has been in this spot before, finishing 10th in the EPT Barcelona Main Event in Season 8 for �50,000.
Top pros Jason Les, Jason Mo, Jeremy Ausmus, and Liviu Ignat were among the players that got knocked out early, while Jonas Palsgaard and Daniel Dvoress shot up the charts. Palsgaard went through some big swings and bagged up 1.9 million, while Dvoress had a rough night and finished with just 700,000.
Former EPT Dortmund champion Mike McDonald (43rd - �22,840) hit the rail on Day 4, as did Michael Eiler, who took down the EPT Vienna Main Event in Season 7. Eiler busted to Eichhardt, who held the lead the last three hours of the day.
Three-time World Poker Tour title holder and recent World Series of Poker gold bracelet winner Anthony Zinno was still in the hunt to become the fastest Triple Crown winner in history, but his run fell short in 41st place.
A big group of nationalities remained in the hunt for the title After Day 4, but Sebastian Tejada was the last American standing. The Canadians are in much better shape, with four players still contending, and that's the most of any country. The home nation of Spain, who finally broke the spell and crowned their first winner at last season's EPT Grand Final, saw Sergio Alonso Camunas hit the rail in 39th place, but still have two players in contention; David Gonz��lez and Mario S��nchez.
Play will resume on Saturday at 12 p.m. local time with 36 players remaining. The goal is to play down as close to six players as possible, but with the amazing structure it looks to be another very long day of poker action. All players are guaranteed �27,400 right now, but everyone has their eye set on the first-place prize of over �1.4 million.