Home / Poker News May 2009 / EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 3 report
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Day 3 report
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2009-05-02 14:27
The European players’ grip on the top positions of the provisional leader board of the EPT’s Monte Carlo Grand Final was broken on Day 3 of the event as American Matthew Woodward clinched the chip lead, having amassed a 2.7 million chip stack.
The European contingent was still well represented near the top of the leader board though, as France’s Ludovic Lacay mustered 2.2 million chips to finish runner up, and Marc Naalden from Holland, the player who had held the chip lead at the end of Day 2 conserved some of his advantage to finish 3rd.
Day 3 began with the 138 survivors from Day 2 set to play down to the last 24. Knowing that the money bubble was set for 88th place, this day would indeed carry special significance for the remaining participants.
Sandra Naujoks, the EPT’s Dortmund champion started the day exceptionally well. She quickly built up a 600,000 large stack and continued pushing forth. Annette Obrestad, in second place at the beginning of Day 3, was hot on her heels. The player to first break the 1 million chip mark would be Peter Trapley, himself near the top of the leaderboard at the start of the day.
As these players were busy taking their stacks to new heights, others had a much harder time. Sorel Mizzi was eliminated relatively early, followed by Joe Hachem, Ilari Sahamies, Andre Akkari and Isabelle Mercier.
The money bubble was reached in a little over 3 hours of play. Given the high number of name pros in the field, it wasn’t exactly a surprise that he bubble boy himself was a well-known player: Marcel Luske headed to the rail at the hands of Sebastian Ruthenberg after he lost a A,9 vs 2,2 match-up.
After the bubble, the flow of eliminations picked up again. Farzad Bonyadi, Phil Laak, Luca Pagano, JJ Liu and Andreas Hoivold bit the dust one after the other. The dinner break tempered the pace of the action somewhat. Marc Naalden, Alex Kravchenko and Sandra Naujoks were eliminated after the break. As the day was called, 31 players remained in contention.
