EPT Vienna kicks off

The Vienna stop of the EPT attracted hundreds of players and saw some excellent poker play, on day 1 the field was halved and the competition just because tougher.

The PokerStars European Poker Tour has stopped at Vienna for an exciting week of poker action. The last time that the EPT visited Vienna was in 2005 with a tournament featuring a buy-in of €2,000. The tournament was won by Pascal Perrault from France who overcame a field of 296 players to become the tour’s sixth champion and take home €184,000. Since then the EPT has produced a further 54 champions and now it is back at Vienna’s City Park, a hall more used to hosting concerts and gala dinners. They began last Wednesday with 234 players taking part in Day 1A of the €5,300 buy-in tournament.

At the end of day one there were exactly half the players left with 117 having been knocked out. At the end of the day there were some interesting names high up in the chip rankings including Team PokerStars Pro Martin Hruby from the Czech Republic, PokerStars qualifier Stephen Chidwick from Britain and Romanian Mihai Manole. The chip leader was Sergii Baranov with 183,200 chips.

At the end of day 1A the top ten chips looked like this:
Sergii Baranov (Ukraine) 183,200
Ramon Cserei (Romania) 168,300
Martin Hruby (Czech Republic) Team PokerStars Pro 159,000
Mihai Manole (Romania) 138,000
Mikhail Olegovich Ryabkov (Russia) PokerStars qualifier 136,800
Nikita Malinovskiy (Russia) 126,200
Stephen Chidwick (UK) PokerStars qualifier 124,400
Petre Ionescu (Romania) 123,600
Karonis Dimitrios (Greece) PokerStars qualifier 122,000
Wasi Akhund (Austria) 121,900
Other strong players included Britain’s Hendon Mobster Barny Boatman, France’s Nicolas Levi, the EPT San Remo runner-up Jakob Karlsson and the 2006 PT Grant Final winner Jeff Williams. There are even more players to keep an eye on with Jake Cody doing well, EPT Barcelona runner-up Santiago Terrazas, Jan Skampa, Antony Lellouche and Tem PokerStars Pro members Lex Velduis, Michael Keiner and finally Ruben Visser with a very short stack.

Of course it was not such as successful day for everyone, a number of big names were knocked out including Canadian Jeff Sarwer, Allan Baekke the Snowfest winner, Marc Naalden, Dragan Galic and some Team PokerStars Pro players Marcin Horecki, Alexander Kravchenko and Arnaud Mattern.

The next few days provided some truly spectacular poker with much excitement and drama. In the end final table consisted of Daniel Negreanu, Konstantinos Nanos, Michael Eiler, Luca Cainelli, Bruno Launais, Matthias Lotze, Martin Hruby and Andreas Wiese After a tough battle the tournament was finally won by Michael Eiler after he saw of a determined Daniel Negreanu.