Barcelona has always been among the most popular EPT stops and the record-breaking field of the Season 13 Barcelona Main Event is the latest proof of this statement. The prestigious €5,300 buy-in tournament this year attracted a total of 1,785 entries.
Day 2 of the Main Event was played on Wednesday with a plethora of well-known poker pros contending along with less familiar faces. The day began with over 900 hopefuls. By its end, there were only 294 of them left to bag and tag their chips.
The money bubble burst yesterday with Romanian Marius Cazacu being the first player to leave the poker tables at Casino Barcelona with a payout. As mentioned above, this year’s EPT Barcelona €5,300 Main Event attracted as many as 1,785 entries, who accumulated a prize pool of €8,925,000. The top 359 finishers will get a share of the money, with minimum payouts totaling €5,630. Apart from the shiny tournament trophy with the PokerStars spade on it, the winner will also collect a first-place prize of €1,122,800.
Nicolas Chouity from Lebanon will be leading the remaining players into Day 3 of the tournament. He collected a total of 559,000 in chips on Wednesday. Chouity is not a stranger to the EPT tournament scene. The player has cashed in a number of events part of Europe’s largest poker tour. What is more, he is a one-time EPT Main Event champion.
In 2010, Chouity won the EPT Season 6 Grand Final €10,600 Main Event for his career biggest payout of €1,700,000. The player has 36 in-the-money tournament results, his career record shows, and has accumulated live winnings of $3,197,610. If he manages to maintain his lead, the Lebanese poker pro has every chance to substantially boost his bankroll.
All remaining survivors are set to return for Day 3 of the Main Event at noon local time. Chouity is leading a pack with both well- and not-so-well-known players. Poker pros Bryn Kenney, Byron Kaverman, Chance Cornuth, and Sam Greenwood are few of the EPT regulars to have made it through Day 2 of the tournament. Fedor Holz, Theo Jorgensen, and Yaxi Zhu, however, were among those busted yesterday.
The EPT Season 13 €5,300 Main Event kicked off on August 22 and will be concluded on August 28 when the final table is slated to be played.
