EPT11 London: High Rollers cast into expensive purgatory, rejoice anyway

It's that point of the week again when PokerStars Blog attempts to drum up some sympathy for a small group of millionaires. Pity the poor high rollers, we say, cast to the boondocks to play out their final table. There are not any studio lights, there is no top billing mostly ballroom and there is almost nobody watching at all, save a live blogger and a tournament director.

Hold on. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

No, no. Pity the poor high rollers, we say, with only the chance of £394,200 to maintain them warm.

The boondocks, Grand Connaught Rooms

That really is definitely the scale of it this afternoon on the Grand Connaught Rooms, where the general table of the £10,000 High Roller is going down concurrently the glamour of the principle Event.

With Jake Cody and Kevin MacPhee some of the Main Event finalists, it was always going to be the case that their final table attracted a number of the attention. But Tournament Room B -- up the stairs, into the bar, take a right -- is a hive of activity too, featuring a number of the world's best.

Perhaps the most productive known two players on the High Roller final are Andrew Chen, an ordinary deep runner within the EPT's biggest tournaments, and Salman Behbehani, who has greater than $2.2m in live tournament cashes. In fact, while you add Chen's $3.5m, those two could host quite a party.

Yet another final table for Andrew Chen

Salman Behbehani, in silhouette

Fady Kamar, who's also within the last six, has amassed $1.3m, at the same time as he has largely flown under the radar, while Craig McCorkell could be tempted to flash a gold bracelet around slightly. He's the one player still left within the tournament who has beamed his big smile for the cameras on the World Series of Poker. (Jooryt van Hoof, currently chip leader within the WSOP Main Event, went out in eighth.)

Craig McCorkell: Stripy scarfy

As can sometimes be the case, however, none of these has the entire chips at the present time. A PERSON named Leonid Markin, from Russia, has the largest stack of all of them and is within the box seat within the try to get this one locked up before the principle Event even loses a player.

Leonid Markin: All of the chips

I'd say that race is round a couple of coin flip. You'll follow all of the updates at the main High Roller page.

That's not where the thrill leads to that tournament room, but the. last-day bonanza that's the £5,000 six-max turbo could also be now under way, and there are some tremendous tables to choose between there.

One particularly is purely five handed on the moment, but features Jason Mercier, Stephen Chidwick, David Peters, Simon Higgins and Ole Schemion. Another has Aku Joentausta, Mickey Petersen, Max Altergott and Daniel Colman.

For a brief period, Frederik Jensen, Martin Finger, Ike Haxton and the aforementioned Van Hoof were table mates, however the latter knocked out Finger and the previous sent Haxton out. I missed the main points of the sooner bust out, but Haxton went when he three-bet shoved the button with 8♠T♠ and Jensen called with K♠7♦.

It's that sort of tournament.

Follow our coverage of the EPT London festival via the primary EPT London page, where there are hand-by-hand updates and chip counts within the panel on the top and have pieces below. And, of course, you'll be able to follow all of it live at EPT Live.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: European Poker Tour]