Ehsan Amiri chipleader, Antoine Labat en demi-finales
After a riveting Day 2 in the €10,300 EPT High Roller at the PokerStars and Barcelona©Casino European Poker Tour, Australia’s Ehsan Amiri leads the final 16 players into the final day of play.
When late registration closed as the day began, 250 runners still had hopes of claiming an EPT High Roller title, but by night’s end, just two tables would remain.
Amiri will be the only player to bring 100 big blinds into Sunday’s action, but there are several others lurking with over two million chips including Andrew Wilson (2,790,000), Stefan Schillhabel (2,710,000), Rui Bouquet (2,550,000), and Kyriakos Papadopoulos (2,280,000). PokerStars Ambassador Ramon Colillas isn't far behind them with 1,800,000.
Top Ten Day End of Day 2 Chip Counts
| RANK | PLAYER | COUNTRY | CHIP COUNT | BIG BLINDS | ||||
| 1 | Ehsan Amiri | Australia | 4,115,000 | 102 | ||||
| 2 | Andrew Wilson | United Kingdom | 2,790,000 | 69 | ||||
| 3 | Stefan Schillhabel | Germany | 2,710,000 | 67 | ||||
| 4 | Rui Bouquet | Hungary | 2,550,000 | 63 | ||||
| 5 | Kyriakos Papadopoulos | Greece | 2,280,000 | 57 | ||||
| 6 | Ramon Colillas | Spain | 1,800,000 | 45 | ||||
| 7 | Laszlo Molnar | Hungary | 1,710,000 | 42 | ||||
| 8 | Eric Rabl | Hungary | 1,570,000 | 39 | ||||
| 9 | Lander Lijo | Spain | 1,480,000 | 37 | ||||
| 10 | Johannes Straver | Netherlands | 1,230,000 | 30 |
After late registration closed with an additional 30 entrants, the final tally of 530 players created a prize pool of €5,141,000, with the winner receiving €962,880, with the top 79 players receiving a min-cash of €17,020.
Despite the large number of players to start the day, bodies flew out the door rapidly, with plenty of notables finishing short of the money including PokerStars Ambassadors Alejandro Lococo and Parker Talbot, along with John Juanda, Sam Greenwood, Erik Seidel, and Adrian Mateos to name just a few.
Just before dinner, the bubble burst, which saw those final 79 players earn a payday, but not before a couple of wild hands, including Manuel Fischer spiking a four on the river to survive after being moved into the big blind and forced all in.
Fischer would go on to indeed make that min-cash as it was Leonard Maue who busted shy of the money after running his queens into the kings of Artur Martirosian.
From there, several players made their moves to storm up the chip counts, including Papadopoulos, whose stack rocketed north with a pair of huge hands that sent Dario Sammartino to the rail.
Several other notables that made the money but couldn’t advance to Day 3 include Dan Smith (75th place - €17,020), €50,000 High Roller winner Mike Watson (56th - €17,020), Day 1 chip leader Jacob Amsellem (28th place - €29,000), and Stephen Chidwick (23rd place - €38,350).
But as it was most of the day, in the end it was Amiri with the biggest stack thanks in part to his elimination of PokerStars Ambassador Andre Akkari on the final hand of the night.
He’ll lead the field down the home stretch beginning at 12:30 p.m. local time Sunday with the start of Level 25 and blinds of 20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 ante.
Keep your browser locked right here as the PokerNews live reporting team will have all the action as another High Roller champion is crowned on the final day of EPT Barcelona.