American player Ronald Morandini emerged as a chip leader at the final 2016 EPT Season 13 Prague €5,300 Main Event, held in the main conference room at the Hilton Prague. This year’s turnout for the main event broke records with a total of 1,178 entries. Day 1B drew a turnout of 244 entries while as many as 934 players participated in Day 1A. There is a possibility for more players joining in since registration is to remain open until Day 2 kicks off today at noon local time.
Day 1B consisted of eight levels of play and each lasted for 75 minutes. Morandini started off with a stack of 30,000 and succeeded in boosting it to 237,400 in chips. It was opponent Emil Patel who gave Morandini’s stack a big boost. Patel shoved for more than 40,000 with pocket jacks on an [8s][8c][9s]
board but Morandini responded with [Kh][8h]
and held.
Yet, Morandini was hardly the only one to end the night well. Lithuanian Matas Cimbolas also finished with a heavy bag of 215,100 in chips. Anton Petrov from Russia bagged 214,800 while EPT champion Maxim Lykov followed in his footsteps and collected 180,400 in chips. Former EPT Prague champions Roberto Romanello and Ensan Hossein also made it through.
Some Day 1B runners were not as fortunate as chip leader Ronald Morandini. William Kassouf’s attempts to intimidate his opponents with his table talk game proved to be unsuccessful. Kassouf failed to boost his starting stack and was down to just over 10,000 in chips. The British player got it in with nine-eights suited only to find himself staring at his opponent’s tens. Kassouf’s bold talk did him no good as he paired a nine and busted out against the tens of his opponent.
Other players to get eliminated on Day 1B were Andrey Zaichenko, Antoine Saout, Gaelle Baumann, Benny Glaser, Sebastian Pauli, Oliver Price, and Max Silver.
As many as 474 players have registered to participate on Day 2 of the 2016 EPT Season 13 Prague €5,300 Main Event. Among them were Ari Engel, Mustapha Kanit, Patrick Leonard, and Philipp Gruissem. Vanessa Selbst, Felipe Ramos, Luca Pagano, Fatima Moreira de Melo and Gabriel Nassif, who are sponsored by PokerStars, also punched Day 2 tickets.
With Day1A and Day1B survivors combined, Day 2 will see 591 runners remaining, in addition to the players who decide to register for the tournament at the last moment. Day 2 of the EPT Prague €5,300 Main Event is to kick off today, at noon local time.
