Home / Poker News October 2008 / EPT Budapest Day 1B report
EPT Budapest Day 1B report
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2008-10-30 18:44
Day 1B of the
European Poker Tour Budapest stop saw many of big names belly up to the tables. The French contingent which dominated Day 1A proceedings was yet again massively represented. This time around however, things didn’t go quite as well for them.
Alexai Portal, Pascal Perrault, Mathieu Jaunay and Betrand “ElkY” Grospellier were all present, the latter fresh off a WPT win in Las Vegas.
Other “name” players were Alan Smurfit, Max Pescatori, Vicky Coren and Davidi Kitai. Altogether 532 players started the day with big hopes, for many of them however, Day 1B would be the last day in the event.
A large part of the French legion got sent to the rail extremely early on. Perrault, Jaunay and Portal were eliminated one after another during the early levels.
Max Pescatori and Noah Boeken also found the rail much earlier than they would’ve liked. Julian Thew took a nasty beating at the hands of Christoph Haller when he went all in on the turn with a pair of 3s in his pocket. The board read A,10,3,9, as Thew looked very solid with his flopped set. Haller was quick to call though, and tabled 10,10 for the higher set. Thew found it hard to believe he was eliminated but the harm was done.
This hand gave Haller a nice stack, which he further enhanced when he took down another big pot later in the day. Holding a K,J in his pocket, he got hit by a board of 7,A,Q,4 for the straight draw. Of all things, a 10 fell on the river giving him a Broadway straight. He then fired out a big bet which got called by an opponent with J,10. The pot he took down this way gave Haller the provisional chip lead, which he relinquished later on after losing a few hands.
At the end of the day, it was Mauro Corsetti who held the lead firmly with 135,000 chips, followed by Pierre Husson and Casey Kastle with 71,000 and 70,000 chips respectively. Johnny Lodden and Alex Kravchenko also survived the day, together with local pros Denes Kalo and Tibor Tolnai.
