Recently in European Poker Tour Category

It was a fitting way to end a magnificent event: two aggressive players playing for a first prize of €595,839. Both the Englishman William Fry and Ciprian Hrisca from Romania may have shared a friendly glass of wine before the heads-up began, but once the glasses were drained the gloves were off for a hand-to-hand battle of wits that culminated in an English triumph, bringing an end to a glorious week on the Danube.

EPT Budapest winner William Fry

The last hand came after less than five hours play. We went pillar to post in less than 300 minutes. Going into the heads-up battle, Hrisca held the initiative with a more than two-to-one chip lead, and he had also shown no sign of capitulation. But Fry stole the Big Mo' shortly before the end when he double up with jack-ten against Hrisca’s pocket sevens, levelling the counts.

The end came when the players became embroiled in a pre-flop raising battle and got all their chips to the middle pre-flop. Fry showed pocket jacks and Hrisca flipped over A-6. The flop of Td-Qs-6s gave Hrisca some hope but the blanks on turn and river swung it towards Fry. After a short pause to resolve who covered whom, the 28-year-old Fry, a former casino croupier, was declared the winner and the first ever EPT Budapest champion.

The speed of the final only added to the drama and it was never long before something had the rail’s attention. Going into the day one name stood out, that of Johnny Lodden, the Norwegian pro with a background of legend when it comes to success online who, since switching to live events, had cashed six times on the EPT, falling agonisingly short of the final table on more than one occasion. That changed this week.

Alas, the final’s poster boy was not yet due that first elusive EPT win in Budapest. Lodden fell first for €53,200, within the early levels of play despite what must have looked like a reassuring pair of kings when he checked his cards. In what would become a massive pot Martin Jacobsen sent the Norwegian home when his 10-7 made a straight. That pot also crippled Zoltan Toth, the Hungarian local hero, who fell a few moments later, picking up €78,736 for seventh.

Hardcore EPT addicts will remember Gino Alacqua from his colourful season four runner-up spot in Prague. Today he celebrated his birthday but was unable to add an EPT title to the joy, his day ending in sixth place when he succumbed in a three way pot to Ciprian Hrisca, leaving in sixth place for €100,016.

Italy’s chances of an EPT winner took a serious blow with Alacqua’s loss but what hope did remain was put to bed when Marino Serenelli fell next in fifth place for €127,680. William Fry saw off Serenelli, shortly before bestowing the same fate on Albert Iversen. Iversen's departure for €153,216 left us with three.

Jacobsen won his seat online at PokerStars and his result here proved that the decision to shift to poker-playing from the kitchen was a good one. At just 21 years of age, the former chef is now carving a name for himself around the poker tables. Jacobsen's week’s work ended in third place and €197,904, busting in a hand against Hrisca who had ladled on the pressure by moving all-in on the river. The young Swede called for his tournament life with second pair but had run slap bang into Hrisca’s flush.

With remarkable haste, the final was now heads up, and in another few blurred minutes, we were crowning Fry, who became the first English winner since Julian Thew’s triumph in Baden on season four. Incidentally both Thew and Fry hail from Nottingham.

Runner-up Ciprian Hrisca

Hrisca’s performance should not go without note. The Romanian was playing in his first live event having only taken up the game 18 months ago in a home game with friends before making the leap to online cash games on PokerStars. Hrisca, who picked Budapest because it was closest to home, may well look upon his decision to take a short Hungarian holiday as one of his best, taking €342,608 back to Bucharest.

The next EPT of the season is in Warsaw, Poland, from November 15-19. Before that, there's all the fun of the second season of the Latin America Poker Tour, beginning tomorrow in Costa Rica. And after that, we'll be in Las Vegas, for the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event, where the Million Dollar Men will be looking to seal their place in history.

It's going to be hectic few weeks on PokerStars blog. Stay with us.

For now, it's goodnight from Budapest.

The corridor between the tournament area and the press room at the Las Vegas Casino, Budapest, is going to need recarpeting at the end of this week. On a day of startling activity at EPT Budapest, the returning day three field of 42 players was trimmed to the final nine in less than five hours. Even though it took another 120-odd minutes to shed one more, keeping up with the action for the most part forced reporters to buzz between the tables and their laptops with hazardous haste and frequency, and no sooner was a player doubling up than he was out; the seeming shoo-ins for the final kicked into touch.

The eight players surviving the cull will return tomorrow to play to a winner, who will be €595,839 richer. It will be one of these:

Zoltan Toth, Hungary (1,059,000)
Ciprian Hrisca, Romania (1,038,000)
Albert Iversen, Denmark (1,017,000)
William Fry, UK, PokerStars player (572,000)
Johnny Lodden, Norway, PokerStars sponsored player (500,000)
Gino Alacqua, Italy (466,000)
Marino Serenelli, Italy (357,000)
Martin Jacobson, Sweden, PokerStars player (306,000)

Regular poker observers will see one name leaping out from the page: that of Johnny Lodden, the Norwegian professional, for whom reaching a first EPT final table is a sizeable step nearer reaching a first EPT title. Lodden, who has six previous cashes in EPT main events without ever making a final table, will tomorrow break that duck, hauling half a million in chips to take his place in the last eight.

The company he'll keep tomorrow fits a classic EPT final table archetype. There's the home-town hero carrying the hopes of most of the railbirds: Zoltan Toth is representing our hosts here in Hungary and is also the narrow chip leader.

In the Scandinavian corner there's Albert Iversen, the 21-year-old Dane and chip leader at the start of day three, and Martin Jacobson, a chef-turned-PokerStars player, who is hoping to join the likes of Mats Iremark, Magnus Petersson and Alexander Stejvic as Swedish EPT champions.

The Italian poker boom continues apace, with the reappearance on an EPT final table of Gino Alacqua, runner up in Prague last year. And there's also another new face from arguably the most promising poker nation in Europe, Marino Serenelli.

William Fry, a British PokerStars player, has capped a memorable debut in major tournament poker by cruising all the way to tomorrow's final test.

And then there's also the Romanian player Ciprian Hrisca, whose move upwards today has been as silent as it has been relentless. He's comfortably in the top three with more than a million.

Of course, to reach those eight, we lost all others: the final remaining Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko perished in 23rd. He was joined on the rail - or in today's €2,000 side event - by the PokerStars players Janek Schleicher, Nicholas Maieritsch, Ofir Abramovivi, Dave Hardy, Robert Firestone, Tommi Etelapera, Dwayne Stacey, Lukas Bencovic, Oleg Korotkov and Sebastian Saffari.

It's been fast, furious and fun. More of the same will follow tomorrow.

Typically day two of a major poker tournament is when the most moves are made, the chips fly in huge flocks from one player to another, and plenty of dreams die. Where there are winners, there must be losers, where there's fortune there's misfortune and where there are headline makers, there are inevitably footnotes. And while there is so much that is inevitable, there is also always something new. We have seen the patterns before but it is the variations on the theme that are most compelling.

Tonight, as they bag up chips for day three tomorrow, we have a new name right at the top of the tree. It's Albert Iversen, from Denmark, who went on a charge in the closing couple of levels to end with 425,000.

This next sentence, on the other hand, has been written plenty of times before: PokerStars players are right up there too. But these players are both new names to reporters and spectators alike: there's the inevitable Scandinavian Martin Jacobson, from Sweden (365,000) but there's also a Slovak, Lukas Benkovic (224,000).

Martin Jacobson

Lukas Benkovic

In the hometown hero category, there's Zoltan Toth (175,000). And filling the shoes of the high profile players going into the penultimate day are the Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko (114,000) and the sponsored player Johnny Lodden (131,000).

Notable by their absence from the the final shakedown are two of the tournament's most dominant forces, who were once peering down from the top of the day one counts, but left without a pay-cheque. Neither Annette Obrestad nor Arnaud Mattern could make it into the money, and they were joined on the rail by Praz Bansi, Fintan Gavin, Luca Pagano and William Thorson before anyone started getting paid.

The last player to walk into the Budapest night with nothing was Thomas Vestergaard, who became today's most celebrated yet most unfortunate elimination as he burst the cash bubble.

As the spectators gathered, Vestergaard had the same hand as Christophe Wemelbeke, but Wemelbeke's A-K was suited in clubs and three flopped, which was definitive.

The rash of eliminations that inevitably followed the resounding pop included Sorel Mizzi, Kara Scott and Danny Ryan. And at the end of the day, there were 41 players remaining, who are already guaranteed €6,384 but will be playing tomorrow to get down to the final table and closer to the first prize of €595,839.

And to round it out, how about the excitement and agony of day two of EPT Budapest in two photographs, modeled by the PokerStars sponsored player Kara Scott.

Good night.

Day 1b of the EPT Budapest had a slow start, a frenetic middle and a finish that mixed everything together. Between the victorious and the defeated there will be those simply happy to be alive. A day on the EPT can be a harsh and unforgiving environment but 94 players tonight - give or take the usual vagaries of these things - have stuffed their chips in plastic bags and will focus on the battles they’ll encounter tomorrow.

The closing stages proved volatile with various eliminations catching us out. Sebastian Ruthenberg was spotted doing the walk of shame before anyone could figure out why, a walk performed by his countryman and fellow shooting star Jan Heitmann earlier in the day. While the Barcelona champ licked his wounds Italian player Mauro Corsetti left only a trail of dust as he sped away into the lead, ending the day as chip leader on close to 130,000.

Mauro Corsetti

He left a trail of contenders behind him looking towards tomorrow for their salvation. Frenchman Pierre Husson was probably next in line on 71,000. American pro Casey Castle was alongside him on 70,000 whilst Londoner Praz Bansi kept pace on 68,000.

For Team PokerStars Pro day 1b was a mixed bag. Noah Boeken was out early, out in the middle was Vicky Coren and out late was Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier who could be forgiven for falling short having flown to Budapest on the back of a WPT win in Las Vegas only a few hours before. It had looked good for the Frenchman but then bad and ElkY drifted away courtesy of hand gone bad against a flopped set.

Dario Minieri flew close to the sun and looked set to re-appear a golden brown colour, a spell of relentless raising putting his table on the back foot almost permanently until he was shot down, crashing out at the mid way stage.

There was betting pickings for William Thorson and Alex Kravchenko however, both of whom were able to finish the day in the black but not by much in Thorson’s case. He lost a critical hand with minutes left on the clock to leave him with just 6,500. His Russian team mate will sleep easier on 40,000.

It was left to Team Pro’s adopted stars to shine. Johnny Lodden tried to break the habit of a lifetime but couldn’t, playing unplayable hands and winning with them to leave him with a stack of 42,000. Kara Scott’s more conservative approach served her well. Despite falling to around 4,000 before the half-way point she steered a careful course of survival, finishing with a flourish in the last few hands of the day and bagging up 20,500.

PokerStars sponsored player Johnny Lodden

So to tomorrow and day 2 when the surviving 88 from day 1a, including Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano, will merge to link up with the 94 of today, including Claudio Pagano.

We're not even a quarter of the way through this thing, but already it's safe to say that EPT Budapest is a success. This might be the first time a major poker tournament has visited Hungary, but so far there hasn't been a foot put wrong by anyone, and it can only get better over the coming week.

That, though, is the end of day 1a, which began with the tournament officials announcing that every seat had been sold - that's 540 of them - and finished with 90 bagging chips. And there was a familiar face bagging the most: the Norwegian Annette Obrestad, who may have only just turned 20, but is already a veteran on the EPT. She won two massive pots towards the close of play, including knocking two players out in the same hand when she made pocket deuces into quads, and is the probable chip leader with close to 100,000.

The EPT Prague champion of season four, Arnaud Mattern, had a fluctuating final couple of levels, but that was only the difference between a huge stack and a large one. He ended with close to 82,000, which is probably good for second place.

It was a day to forget for the Team PokerStars Pros Marcin Horecki and Katja Thater. Horecki made the final table at EPT London earlier in the month, but perished very early here. The World Series bracelet winner Thater also couldn't get going in Budapest and bust in mid afternoon. Better news though for Luca Pagano, who flies the Team PokerStars Pro flag into day two. The Italian flew out of the blocks and doubled his stack within the first couple of levels. And although 25,000 is still more than alive and kicking, he has slipped slightly down the field.

Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano

Anton Ionel, from Romania, has about 60,000; Robert Andersson, of Sweden, has about 51,000. Although the local favourite Valdemar Kwaysser went out, many other Hungarians remain in the field including Antonio Karman (45,000), Peter Gelencser (35,000) and Jozsef Ruttkai (35,000).

The new season of the PokerStars European Poker Tour is in full flow, with winners in Barcelona and London, as well as a high-roller champion. Next up is Budapest, Hungary, the first time the tour has reached these parts, making this new ground for the biggest and best poker tour in the world.

They’ll be a new champion as well as stories and characters along the way, all of which will be reported on the PokerStars.net blog. It starts in a week's time on Tuesday 28 October in the appropriately named Las Vegas casino at the Sofitel Hotel, downtown Budapest. The biggest and brightest will be there. Stay tuned.

In the meantime a quick recap of what it’s about...

EPT Barcelona winner Sebastian Ruthenberg

EPT London winner Michael Martin

EPT £1 Million Showdown winner Jason Mercier

High roller events on the European Poker Tour are some of the most expensive side events in the world. The Million Pound Showdown at EPT London this week was the richest we've seen on these shores. It cost £20,000 to enter, somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 and the Million Pound part referred to the guaranteed prize pool. As it happens, the 86 players soared past that generous guarantee and when they convened yesterday, they knew they were playing for a first prize of £516,000.

Step forward Jason Mercier for it is yours.

Mercier's victory here completed a remarkable few months for the young American professional. Last April, he rose to prominence as a PokerStars player in San Remo where he took down €869,000 first prize. He made a World Series final table, and then he was back around the felt of the EPT last month, finishing sixth for another huge chunk. He took the short flight to London, bought into this huge event and bludgeoned his way to this final table. He'll now take another half a million pounds back to Florida.

It was a measure of the quality of the field beaten by Mercier that between the final three players - Mercier joined by John Juanda and Michael Watson - there was a triple crown won in the past year. As mentioned, Mercier is the reigning EPT San Remo champion. Watson won the $15,000 WPT Bellagio Cup in Las Vegas in the summer. And just last weekend John Juanda took down the WSOP Europe event to add to his other bracelets and titles.

The line up

Add to that the multiple bracelet winner Scotty Nguyen, Isaac Haxton, the huge cash player David Benyamine and the Team PokerStars Pro Isabelle Mercier, and we were looking at a table of the very highest quality. (For the record, the Million Dollar Man Dennis Phillips, chip leader at next month's WSOP main event final table, bubbled. It was a tough field; I'm sure you get the point.)

Isabelle Mercier has honed her game on the EPT, finishing two of the final table at the first Monte Carlo Grand Final, then making sixth spot in Deauville on season two. She's had several cashes at the World Series, including a final table in 2006, and few were surprised to see her back around the final table felt, even if she perished first today - ninth place - for £51,000.

Team PokerStars Pro Isabelle Mercier

The Team PokerStars Pro was the first casualty of Watson's early mad rush. The two Canadians were short-stacked early, but Watson was catapulted up the ladder when he took Mercier's chips with A-K against her A-J, and then he also accounted for Benyamine, who couldn't get his characteristically aggressive style going with a short stack all day. Watson gleefully heard Benyamine call when the PokerStars player found aces. Benyamine's K-J never caught up.

Watson wasn't done, and having knocked out the final European in Benyamine, he then accounted for the only other player from outside north America. That was the Japanese high roller Masaaki Kagawa, who got busy once they went down to seven. But he was eventually ensnared by Watson's A-K, especially cruel since the Japanese had A-Q. There was no outdraw and Watson had taken them down to six.

Up next for the guillotine was Haxton, whose tournament strategy is pretty much faultless. He made no mistake in shoving pre-flop with pocket eights; no mistake, that is, except running into Juanda's aces. Again, there was no outdraw and Haxton took home another massive payday as well as another bold entry on his resume.

Until that point, Peter Jetton had been a fairly quiet presence at the final table, despite having the largest stack at the start of play and having held onto it as all the others shared it out. He doubled up the short stack of Nguyen, then we played through more than 90 minutes with five players. But Nguyen, in a buoyant mood throughout the final table, was finally sharing his monologue with the post-match interview crew after Juanda's K-9 outdrew his A-10.

Jetton was jettisoned soon after when he clashed with the ever-growing stack in front of Mercier. They got cute with one another pre-flop, before subtlety made way and they got all their chips in. Mercier had lowly pocket deuces, Jetton an A-J. But the ducks made a set on the flop and there's no way back.

Three handed was an intriguing battle between these form horses. Watson doubled up a couple of times but could never overtake either of his opponents, who exchanged the lead between them. Watson was obdurate but eventually succumbed with A-7 to Juanda's A-K. That left Juanda with a two-to-one chip lead, but it soon vanished in a crucial pot, the first of heads up, when Mercier called Juanda's all in with Q-J versus A-2. Mercier admitted that he thought Juanda could outplay him heads up, especially with the chips, so was prepared to get them in with a 60-40 shot.

They were good tactics as he rivered a jack to double up and then he did it again after a short heads-up duel. This time he took K-Q against A-J and flopped a broadway straight. A remarkably modest Mercier claimed he had sucked out on Juanda twice heads up. But his results of recent months reveal a real talent.
So to Juanda, who nearly completed an historic double here. He had endured a 22-hour final table in the WSOPE last weekend, triumphing well into tomorrow. He came up one short here, but London has been good to him.

Hat's off, though, to Mercier. And to another terrific double-header on the EPT. Budapest is next, and London will still be here this time next year.

They came eyeing a £1m first prize and tonight it has become the opening deposit into the new European bank account of Michael Martin, the 24-year-old from Washing Cross, PA. The popular young American went from hero to zero to hero again and eventually stood firm against the buffeting of an especially brutal final table. At one point, he was down to just 95,000 in chips and in the big blind of 80,000. But he tripled, doubled and doubled up again to vault into a chip lead with four remaining and it was never relinquished from that point on.

Martin's mother, girlfriend and good friend Brandon Schaefer all flew to see him at the final table and each was richly rewarded for their troubles. Despite a wretched opening couple of levels, which his supporters viewed through their fingers, Martin enjoyed a mini-renaissance, then another slump but then that surging comeback through just three remarkable hands. And when the fluctuations finally ended just before 11pm, Martin was a millionaire.

The final table was notable for more reasons than just that £1m. It was the third appearance there within a year for the Frenchman Antony Lellouche and the second for Johannes Strassmann, who has also twice bubbled one short of the last eight. Lellouche had the chance to go one better than his second place in San Remo in April; Strassmann had the opportunity to make it two from two this season for the German Shooting Stars team after Sebastian Ruthenberg's success in Barcelona last month.

How they lined up

But in the event, they were the first two out the door. Strassmann accounted for Lellouche with K-J versus A-9 - although Lellouche had previously lost a race on the first hand of the final, when his pocket fours lost against Philippe Dauteuil's A-K.

But then Strassmann again found himself on the ropes, thumped relentlessly by the gods of ill fortune. Martin doubled up through the German with the first vicious outdraw, and then the Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki also put Strassmann to the sword with Q-J against Strassmann's A-10. A jack rivered to take another chunk. Strassmann's final hand was jacks against king-queen. Martin had the K-Q but the queen flopped and the German was sunk.

Next to fall was Alan Smurfit, the Irish player who probably has more experience of live poker than all of his opponents put together.

The 66-year-old describes himself as a recreational player, but only because he evidently enjoys it too much to describe it as work. But there's no doubt he could also make a living this way: he proudly uses his World Series of Poker bracelet as his card protector and frequently cashes in the major events across the world.

This was his first EPT final table (although he made 14th here last year) and it would end with £153,351 for sixth place. After allowing himself to get short stacked, he pushed in with A-4 and it was that man Martin who called with J-J. There were no surprises for Smurfit and he was gone.

Philippe Dauteuil, from Canada, took fifth. He had led the tournament for long periods through days two and three, but struggled to get his game going on the final table despite some of the most vociferous support from the rail. Some of them might have been enjoying a beer or two as they hooted and honked from the bleachers, supporting their countryman, but they were silenced when he ran pocket eights into Horecki's pocket kings.

While all this sound and fury was playing out on and around the final table, one man had impressed just about everyone who knows anything about poker. His name was Eric Liu, from San Francisco, a high-stakes cash game player who committed himself earlier this year to learning to improve his live tournament play. If he improves it much more, he's going to be one of the all-time greats: he bossed the feature table for two full days hardly ever showing a hand down and building a massive stack.

With four left, Liu had more chips than all of his opponents combined. But even he couldn't survive this most crippling of contests and was knocked out in fourth. In his post-tournament interview, he blamed his inexperience for his demise, but there's not a great deal you can do when you fail to hit flush or straight draws, with an overcard, then run a suited ace into pocket rockets, then collide with a player (Martin) on the maddest run of cards ever seen at an EPT final table. There is no doubt whatsoever that Eric Liu will be back.

The final three were the aforementioned Martin, the Swedish PokerStars player Michael Tureniec and another man we're going to hear a whole lot about: Marcin Horecki. The Pole is the newest member of Team PokerStars Pro, signed up after a glittering start to his poker career with some terrific results across Europe and then a call to poker's brightest Team for the World Series of Poker.

In his first outings in Team colours, he has been quiet and efficient, impressing table-mates with his solid aggression. And here in London it paid rich dividends as he found the right time to shove his short stack in over and over again until, at one point, it was the biggest at the table. Of course, he also couldn't account for Martin and lost a huge pot to him when the American's 10-2 made trips on the river. Eventually, the remainder of his chips were in the middle behind K-8 and it couldn't beat the K-J of Tureniec.

Third place is a terrific showing from the Polish player, matching the superlative exploits on the European Poker Tour of several of his Team PokerStars Pro colleagues. Welcome to the club, Marcin.

Horecki's departure, however, left two for the money. Two for a million pounds - somewhere north of a $1.7m and huge bucks in any language. As it always tends to, it went this way and that, hither and thither, with Martin's three-to-one chip lead reined in, then extended, then reined in again. The crucial pot came shortly into level 31, where the blinds and antes had been raised to 60,000-120,000, and Martin picked off a ballsy bluff from Tureniec. The Swede had a stab at a jack-high board with nothing but queen high, but Martin called for a huge chunk of his stack with second-pair 10s and they were good.

Soon after, it all went in pre-flop with Martin holding pocket fours and Tureniec holding K-9. The fours made a set on the turn and the millionaire was crowned.

But now the dust has settled, it's Martin with the million and the broadest smile. He was on the alternates list for this capacity tournament, not certain to even get his seat. But he was called in mid-way through level one and never looked back. A great champion and richly deserved.

It's good-night from the EPT London.

Before plan started today we suggested it might be a good idea to clear the decks, cancel all appointments and do everything you could to ensure nothing took your focus away from this pivotal day in the EPT London. If you were able to do that then well done - consider making it up to loved ones next weekend. If not, you missed a great day of poker. Allow us to fill you in.

As play began, there were four tables tucked into the remaining tournament area of the Victoria Casino surrounded by players and spectators shaking off the effects of an early finish and late bar last night. Divided equally across them were some poker kings, well equipped to give hardened poker hacks something to talk about, even those who claim to have seen it all before.

For starters there was the sole surviving Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki, Michael Martin of EPT grand final fame, Max Pescatori and Sorel Mizzi, and the last remaining Englishman Ian Frazer. Johannes Strassmann finessed his way through the day, as did the Million Dollar Man Peter Eastgate. The list of players with a proven track record seemed endless. Scotty Nguyen was still here, Antony Lellouche as well, not to mention the overnight chip leader Philippe D’Auteuil.

So it was hardly surprising that bundling such a premier bunch of players together, locking them in a room, dealing them cards for 11 hours and upping the blinds every level would create some fireworks - explosions that would either send a player to the rail, as happened to Nguyen (32nd), Mizzi (27th), Frazer (25th) and Molander (21st), Eastgate and Pescatori; or the positive kind, ones that would act like a supercharger, injecting enough sparkle to make these guys rocket men, seen from any high place in town.

Scotty Nguyen

Eight players, perhaps in a rare whimsical moment, could claim something along those lines.

Michael Tureniec, Sweden, PokerStars player - 1,331,000
Eric Liu, USA - 1,308,000
Antony Lellouche, France - 1,022,000
Michael Martin, USA - 718,000
Philippe Dauteuil, Canada - 476,000
Johannes Strassmann, Germany, PokerStars player - 434,000
Alan Smurfit, Ireland - 396,000
Marcin Horecki, Poland, Team PokerStars Pro - 309,000

Winding up in this spot did not come easily. The pace was relentless, right from the moment Nguyen busted through to Erik Sjodin’s exit in ninth, which brought play to a close.

Michael Martin was the early high flyer, quickly establishing an enormous lead as the first player to construct a seven figure stack roughly the size of a hat box. He went on to use it without prejudice. Antony Lellouche did the same. The Frenchman steered a course to his third EPT final, the first of which came on this very table 12 months ago. Not to be outdone, the PokerStars player Michael Tureniec saw to it that he would do the same, winding up the day with the chip lead, the closest player to the first prize of £1 million.

Michael Martin

Johannes Strassmann will make his third EPT final table appearance tomorrow, no doubt hoping to put behind him the near misses in Prague and San Remo last year (ninth both times) and avenge that fateful day in Dortmund in season three where the lead and momentum was snatched away from him, and was never seen again.

As levels passed by the bright lights began to fade. Jonas Molander fell away, into the arms of his fifth EPT cash, so too the Italian Max Pescatori, the scourge of many a busted player this week, who finished in 15th place to break his EPT duck. The former Indy car driver and PokerStars player Gualter Salles, who only began playing a little more than two years ago in between running an racing team, saw his high speed adventure crash out in 14th place.

Gualter Salles

The Million Dollar Man Peter Eastgate tried to pull off his first EPT final table ahead of his date in the Las Vegas desert next month. It was not to be for the Dane who suffered from an unexpected run of bad hands before he finally succumbed to chronic chip shortage.

The final word should be saved for Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki (pronounced horet-ski if you were wondering). Horecki turned a few heads this week with some solid play, winning a vital pot on day two that sent a couple of players to the rail and turned his own fortunes around.

Horecki won another vital pot that served the same purpose today. All-in with Q-9, Strassmann called with what looked like a day-ending pair of aces. All clear on the flop but then came the miracle running nines. He already has an EPT cash to his name from Copenhagen in 2007. That payout has been topped easily this week. We’ll wait to see by how much.

There are days on the European Poker Tour that seem to last so far past midnight that you can walk out of the casino and straight into a bagel and an orange juice. And then there are days that pass in the blink of an eye. Mercifully for the press pack squeezed in serried ranks into the Victoria Casino's media centre, this day was a fast one: we went from 154 to 32 before the London bars even closed, and that happens at 11pm.

How it happened is not for the faint-hearted. There was murder out there. Before we had even properly set up our computers the flow of eliminations had started, and a member of the media burst through the door every couple of minutes to announce (in no particular order) that all these had busted before the bubble burst: Ramdin! Akkari! Bellande! Channing! De Wolfe! Fougeron! Kalo! Hansen! Cascarino! Chidwick! Jelassi! Kravchenko! Mercier! Watson! Mouawad! Thew!

We then had to hang around for about an hour as there was an extended period of hand-for-hand play as we went from 58 to the 56 who would be paid. The unlucky man was Hafiz Khan, a runner up to ElkY at the PCA in January, but here splattered with the membrane of the bursting bubble.

That sent us on a dinner break for 45 minutes but when we returned the pace had not slackened one bit. In fact, it sped up to one of the fastest sustained periods of bust outs we've ever seen. There were suck-outs galore, including the departure of the EPT Prague champion Arnaud Mattern, who was sent from hero to zero by his countryman David Benyamine in two massive chunks: Benyamine's 7-8 outdrew A-9 and then 4-4 outdrew Q-Q.

Arnaud Mattern

Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso must have had some sympathy for Mattern after her A-K was no match for Max Pescatori's A-J when a jack flopped. That they'd got all their sizeable stacks in pre-flop must have hurt.

Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso

That left Vicky Coren and Marcin Horecki to fly the Team PokerStars flag. But Coren's slumped to half-mast just after the bubble burst and then was taken down entirely when she couldn't beat the kings of Anthony Lellouche with her pocket tens. So it is that one of the newest members of the Team - the Polish player Horecki - to stand alone into day three.

Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki

Horecki knocked out Julian Thew and Stephen Chidwick in the same hand and coasted into the money. Also bagging up massive stacks of chips tonight are the PokerStars players Sorel Mizzi and Joe Elpayaa.

Right at the top of the pile is the Canadian Philippe D'Auteuil, who has more than 400,000 to show for his day's work. Tomorrow we will make those remaining 32 fit into the eight chairs of the final table. It probably isn't going to be quicker than this.