Suarez soars past Rascar as EPT Barcelona Main Event down to final 11

Posted on: August 29, 2025 13:47 PDT

29 players returned for Day 5 of the 2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event, with France's Yohan Rascar leading the way with a stack of 5,725,000. That put him 1.5 million ahead of Spain's Sergio Marin. And both players had fast starts to the day, picking up sizeable pots and, maybe, allowing themselves to look ahead to Sunday when the remaining six players will return to play for the €1,436,000 first prize.

Rascar was having a ball. He cracked aces after semi-bluffing the turn with a double gutter. Rifat Palevic got all his chips in and was staring down a huge double-up, until the dropped on the river, which was one of the cards Rascar was praying for. That saw him move up to 8.5 million.

However, he wasn't going to have it his own way on a dramatic day at Casino Barcelona. The smartly dressed Anton Suarez was on Rascar's table, and he started hoovering up chips, moving ahead of the former chip leader and becoming the first player to hit a 10 million stack.

That became 16 million after he eliminated Tobias Leknes with vs. . Both players paired their ace on the flop, and both players paired their kickers — Suarez on the turn, Leknes on the river. By the time the river card hit, Leknes was already walking.

At the same time, Rascar was sliding down the leaderboard.

Yohan Rascar started the day as the big chip leader but didn't have things his own way on Day 5.

Great Foggin laydown

Another player who was starting to stand out was Marc Foggin. He lost a big pot earlier in the day after running his K-Q into Julian Pineda’s A-Q, with two queens on the flop. He could have lost a load more when he picked up with just 12 players left. Sebastian Ionita had already three-bet from a virtually identical 5 million stack with when Foggin four-bet to 1.3 million from the big blind.

Ionita clicked it back to 2.1 million, and Foggin went into the tank. He didn't take long to find the fold and perhaps preserve his tournament life.

His consolation is that he wouldn't have to wait long to find out what Ionita actually had.

France's Thomas Eychenne got the final word on Day 5. Eychenne had a deep run in this summer's WSOP Main Event, where he finished 47th. His biggest score came at the PokerStars Players Championship in 2023, where he finished 7th for $801,000. He'll be hoping to better that in Barcelona after cracking Joao Webber's aces on the last hand of the night.

Eychenne had queens and drilled another one on the flop. Webber got €85,100 for his pain, but he had just over 4 million chips before that last hand and won't have a happy night's sleep. He was also the last player to leave without a six-figure payout. Eychenne ended with the second-biggest stack.

29 had become 11, all now guaranteed a €102,000 payday. Rascar made it to Day 6 but with the shortest stack this time round. He'll return with the other 10 players at noon on Saturday to play down to the final table on Sunday.