Bergstrom Leads Final 24 at EPT London

Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 05 October 2011 / Leave a Comment

Mattias Bergstrom (Photo credit: PokerNews / PokerStars)

All of the remaining 24 are guaranteed at least £19,000, although each continues to eye that £750,000 prize for first.

It was a relatively short Day 4 at the European Poker Tour London Main Event as the field shrunk from 62 to 24. Soon after the last hands were dealt on Tuesday, the Swede Mattias Bergstrom was bagging up the most chips with 1,838,000, but only barely so as Adria Balaguer of Spain had 1,828,000 and the German Pascal Harmann 1,800,000 even.

Also among the top 10 heading into Wednesday are Benny Spindler of Germany, who has been at or near the top of the counts each day thus far, as well as start-of-Day-4 leader James Mitchell and Martins Adeniya, both of the U.K.

Adeniya had a nice first couple of levels on Tuesday, jetting out ahead of everyone into the chip lead with more than 1.4 million as players quickly fell. Early eliminations on Day 4 included Barny Boatman (57th), Andreas Munoz (50th), and Jamie Rosen (49th), all of whom earned £11,000 for their troubles. Then as part of the next group to go out with £13,000 paydays were Ana Marquez (42nd), Marvin Rettenmeier (41st), and Roberto Romanello (37th).

Humberto Brenes managed to triple up his short stack before having the misfortune of running Ah-Ks into Juan Manuel Pastor's Ac-As to go out in 32nd for £16,000. Within the next couple of hours seven more players earned the same amount after getting KO'd, including four more Brits, Laurence Houghton (30th), Sam McDonald (27th), Daniel Rowlands (26th), and Neil Pearce (25th).

Here's a look at the top 10 heading into tomorrow's Day 5:

1. Mattias Bergstrom - 1,838,000

2. Adria Balaguer - 1,828,000

3. Pascal Hartmann - 1,800,000

4. Jeremy Kottler - 1,693,000

5. Benny Spindler - 1,421,000

6. Basile Yaiche - 1,245,000

7. Kevin Iacofano - 1,122,000

8. Martins Adeniya - 1,081,000
9. Andre Klebanov - 1,000,000

10. Juan Manuel Pastor - 940,000

All of the remaining 24 are guaranteed at least £19,000, although each continues to eye that £750,000 prize for first. Tomorrow they'll play down to a final eight-handed table, where the payouts will begin at £64,000.

High Roller news

The Main Event was not the only poker of note being played on Tuesday as the £20,000 buy-in High Roller event got underway, attracting 75 runners to create a healthy prize pool of £1,485,000. Only the top eight finishers make the money in this one, with £520,000 due the winner.

Early casualties on Tuesday included Justin Bonomo and Johnny Lodden. Viktor Blom, Vanessa Selbst, and Theo Jorgensen were among those eliminated before the dinner break, with Bertrand Grospellier and Barry Greenstein in the group following them to the rail afterwards.

Of the 30 players who made it through to tomorrow's Day 2, Sam Stein of the U.S. led the way with 240,000, followed closely by the Canadian Michael Watson with 225,900.

Not far off the pace set by those two are Isaac Haxton (U.S.), Michael Tureniec (Sweden), and November Niner Phil Collins (U.S.) rounding out the top five. Brits Luke Schwartz, James Bord, and Sam Trickett are all returning to comparatively decent-sized stacks on Wednesday as well.

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