Home / Poker News September 2009 / EPT Barcelona Day 5 – Carter gets the goods
EPT Barcelona Day 5 – Carter gets the goods
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2009-09-11 10:38
With only 8 players remaining in the run for the €850,000 first prize, Day 5 kicked off with furious action right from the very first hands. Short stacks had to jostle for a better position to stave off elimination and large stacks wanted to see them gone asap, so no quarter was given or expected.
Carter Philips came into the final table action with the chip lead, having amassed a 4.42 million chip stack the previous day.
Toni Ojala, one of the shorter stacks seized the opportunity on one of the early hands to slam it all in on his pocket rockets. He got called by Asa Smith who had Ah, Qh and the board eventually gave the pot to Ojala for the double up.
Mihai Manole and Carter Phillips locked horns next, with Manole’s Ad,Kd hitting a runner-runner flush to spoil the split for Phillips’ A,Ko.
Santiago Terrazas was another short-stack who put his tourney life onto the line early. His A,2 though proved to be no match for Matt Lapossie’s pocket Ks, at least until an A landed on the river to bail the short-stack out once again. Apparently, despite the positively killer attrition, the first elimination of the final table just wouldn’t come.
Following Terraza’s miracle escape though, came an all-in battle between Georgios Kapalas and Marc Goodwin. The former’s Kc, Qc failed to catch anything against Goodwin’s A,10 though, whose high-card came through for the win.
The next victim was Matt Lapossie. Having been the bluff master for the last few days, Lapossie didn’t let up for one second at the final table either. His demise came on a busted bluff as well, as Toni Ojala’s pocket Qs made short work of his J,4o.
Despite the timely chip-up, Ojala would be the one to exit next, ironically: holding pocket Qs again. This time however, he was up against Phillips’ pocket rockets and he failed to catch up.
After the hit taken early on, Asa Smith held on as best he could but the diminishing field meant his turn to head to the rail was drawing near. Phillips was the one who delivered the final blow to Asa on an A,3 vs A,5 match-up where he hit a pair of 5s to send Smith packing.
Manole made no mistake shoving all in on his Ac, 10c against Goodwin’s A,9o but he got unlucky. A board with 4 spades landed and Goodwin’s 9 was a spade too, so Manole’s EPT adventure was over.
Terrazas matched skills with Goodwin next, and his flush draw fell to Goodwin’s flopped pair of Ks. The heads-up stage between Goodwin and Phillips was set. The two players were relatively evenly matched, with Phillips holding the chip advantage over his opponent.
Though the lead did change hands once during the match-up, Phillips eventually prevailed. The final hand of the event was a K,J vs A,10 match-up where Phillips was the initial underdog but caught up quickly as the flop gave him a pair of Ks.
The turn and the river brought harmless bricks and Goodwin was eliminated in second place, with a €500,000 prize in his pocket.
