With registration closing at the start of today’s Day 2, final numbers are in for the European Poker Tour (EPT) Monte Carlo Main Event. And in an echo of the Asian Poker Tour’s recent record-breaking success in Taipei, attendance is booming for the EPT’s traditional curtain closer.
1,195 entries makes this very nearly the best attended EPT Main Event ever held in Monte Carlo, with last year’s total of 1,208 beating this year’s crowd by the thinnest of whiskers.
A cool million Euros awaits the winner, the top 8 will receive six-figure payouts, and in total 175 players will be paid.
‘You don’t sleep better with the chip lead’
Scotland’s David Docherty finished on top of the chip counts on Day 1a for a top 3 stack entering Day 2, but couldn't see it out.
Nevertheless, before he was eliminated he did share with us an interesting insight into the psychological effect of bagging an overnight chip lead — admittedly, not something that every poker player will have to deal with.
“You don’t sleep better when you end the day with the chip lead, you sleep worse,” he says. “I wouldn’t call it nerves, as such, but you think more about the deep end of the tournament when you’ve got a chip lead. If I’d just bagged the average stack, I'd be focused on maintaining it, keeping an eye on where the bubble is, and making sure I don’t make any dumb mistakes. But with the chip lead, I think there's bizarrely a bit more pressure: you don't want to f*** it up when you realise how much that stack can carry.”
Docherty ended up out in 226th, hopefully not with the worst hand he ever played.
With the bubble soon approaching at the time of writing, it could be an awkward dinner break for some.
Nguyen wins the biggest ever EPT Super High Roller
If the Main Event came close to topping the biggest ever field, the €100K Super High Roller did one better and set a new high watermark with 74 entries.
Christopher Nguyen’s name and smiling face may seem familiar to poker fans beyond European borders — while he hasn’t been a fixture on the high-rolling tournament scene for very long, he did make the final table of the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event, where he ultimately finished 5th for $2.1M.
The fresh-faced young German seemed to play every hand with a smile on his face, and he’ll have even more reasons to be happy now he has a major trophy to his name, having taken down the €100K Super High Roller here yesterday.
It goes without saying that the fields in these super high roller events are never less than intimidating, and as expected the final six players who made it through to the final day contained no weak links. Leon Sturm, Mikita Badziakouski, Orpen Kisacikoglu, Seth Davies and Enrico Camosci joined Nguyen for the finale.
Talks of a deal were mooted when just three players remained — Nguyen, Camosci and Davies — but in the end the threesome decided to play it out. Davies of the USA was soon undone by a cooler, running his 
into Camosci’s 
on a board of 
.
That left Nguyen and the young Camosci to duke it out with all the vigor of youth. The lead swung both ways, and in the end it was Nguyen who emerged with the win, the trophy and €2,022,000.
Camosci’s runner-up spot was worth €1,304,500, and is his second ‘almost’ finish of the week, having previously lost out to Kayhan Mokri in the €10,200 NLH Mystery Bounty, where 2nd place was good for €148,600.
Mokri’s payout, including bounties, came to ‘just’ €146,500, while third place finisher Manuel Carvalho of Portugal took the biggest prize of €152,600 thanks to bounties collected.
Other winners this week
Other players to have already lifted trophies of their own this week include Jesse Lonis, who defeated fellow American Chris Brewer in the €30K NLH Super High Roller Warm-Up for €449,802; Spain’s Cesar Garcia, who won the €10,200 PLO for €165,600; and Finland’s Aku Joentausta, who banked €124,400 in the €5,200 PLO.
The PokerStars Open events, which ran prior to the start of the EPT festival proper, also attracted some huge numbers including 2,387 in the €1,100 PokerStars Open Main Event, won by Norway’s Jon Kyte for €340,000. The UK’s Mathew Frankland picked up €409,100 in the €2,200 PokerStars Open High Roller, while the €550 PokerStars Open Cup was won by Remy Murcia of France, who took the top prize of €125,000.
EPT Monte Carlo runs through to May 10, when the Main Event will draw to a close.
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca/Danny Maxwell/Rational Intellectual Holdings, Ltd.
