Day three of the €10,000 High Roller has so far been all about one player. That player is Iliodoros Kamatakis. The Greek entered the day with 1,230,000 and by the time the start of day field of 18 had been whittled down to 11 he’d more than trebled that stack. At that point he had more than double his nearest challenger.

By the time the unofficial final table of nine had been reached he’d dropped a few chips and Kenneth Smaron had closed in on his lead. It didn’t take long to go from unofficial final table to final table as Davidi Kitai was down to around nine big blinds and lost a race with AJ against Rocco Palumbo’s pocket tens to bust in ninth, earning €61,110.

The final eight players will line up as below. For Kamatakis, he’s already locked up the biggest cash of his career and by the end of the day he may well also have his first tournament victory. Blinds are now 25,000/50,000 ante 5,000

The opening two levels saw plenty of action, with seven players sent packing and reducing the field to just 11. The first elimination of the day occurred less than five minutes after play started when Artem Metalidi was eliminated by Rocco Palumbo. The Ukrainian only had around seven big blinds and got them in with pocket sixes. He was dominated by Palumbo’s pocket sevens though and didn’t hit his two outer.

Nicholas Palma’s tournament came to an end in similar fashion. He open shoved for just over six big blinds with pocket threes and was duly dispatched by Luc Greenwood who woke up with jacks. The American’s exit took the field down to 16 and the final two tables. Another American would go in 15th and it was Bryan Paris who was that man and again it was pair against pair. His nines were crushed by Kenneth Smaron’s pocket kings and the 4A7610 board was no help and he was out in 16th earning €36,060.

By the time Mikkel Lokkegaard Hansen was eliminated in 15th place the blinds had ticked up to 15,000/30,000 ante 4,000 and it was William Foxen who was next to go. His exit was the start of Kamatakis’ charge, as Foxen four-bet shoved deueces (button versus small bind) for right around 27 big blinds and Kamatakis called off with nines. Yet again the dominating pair held up and we were down to thirteen.

There was, at this stage, no stopping Kamatakis as he was the executioner once more, sending Greenwood to the rail as the Canadian’s AJ failed to spike against the Greek’s pocket kings. The theme of the day then was the best hand holding up in the all-in situations.

This left two six-handed tables, but not for long as shortly afterwards Mihails Morozovs got his final 11.5 big blinds in the middle with AQ and was racing for his tournament life against Jaroslaw Sikora’s pocket eights. It’s the time of year for snowmen and the pair won the race on a 1058JA board.

Not long after the players returned from the first break of the day the field was reduced to the final ten and it was Aleksandr Denisov who fell in 11th spot. He found himself down to about four big blinds and they went in with A4. He was in a bad spot though as Kamatakis (who else) had him dominated with A9. The J93 flop left him drawing thin and after the 8 turn he was drawing dead.

With ten left Kenneth Smaron doubled through Ihar Soika with A9 against KQ and that meant that the American had more chips than Kevin MacPhee when they played an all-in about 30 minutes later. MacPhee four-bet all-in for around 900,000 (22.5 big blinds) with AJ and Smaron snapped him off with AK. The J510 flop gave MacPhee the lead, but the Q turn saw Smaron re-take the lead, which he held on 3 river.

It’s shaping up to be a fascinating final table, a reminder below of the prizes on offer:

If you want to read more hand for hand action from the high roller you can follow that in the panel at the top of this page.

You can follow all the Main Event action on this page.

If you like moving pictures then you’ll be happy to hear that #EPTLive coverage of the Main Event is in full swing. Watch that here.

And side event coverage – lots of it – can be found here. Whilst the results of the events that have already finished are being collated here.

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We’re not even finished with EPT Prague, but if you’re ready to start planning for next year, we now have the first look at the EPT Dublin schedule.

It’s been eight years since the EPT has been to Dublin. Now, the tour is headed back to the Royal Dublin Society for a 67-event schedule with buy-ins for every bankroll.

If you’re looking for the UKIPT, that tour is once again partnering with the EPT for another major festival.

If you find yourself with time between February 9 and 20, we have the full schedule below. You can also visit the EPT Dublin page for full information about the Dublin tour stop.

Enjoy!

This EPT is brought to you by PokerStars, the official sponsor of the European Poker Tour. Win your way into the biggest events Europe has to offer at Europe.

At 43 years old, Ilkin Amirov has already made history on the European Poker Tour. He’s the first person from the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan to make an EPT final table. Wednesday, he could be his nation’s first winner.

After slowly working his way to the chip lead early on Day 5, Amirov won one of the most spectacular and memorable hands in the EPT’s 12-season history. The four-way all-in pre-flop pot was worth nearly ten million chips. His pocket kings held up against pocket queens, pocket jacks, and 89 to give Amirov nearly a full third of the chips in play. (Read about how that hand happened here: City gets chilly; Amirov livin’ the dream.)

When the final table resume on Day 6, Amirov will take his chip lead up against five other players who hope to run as well as Amirov ran today. Here’s how they stack up.

Ilkin Amirov (Azerbaijan) 9,965,000
Gleb Tremzin (Russia) 7,785,000
Thomas Butzhammer (Germany) 5,490,000
Slaven Popov (Bulgaria) 3,640,000
Hossein Ensan (Germany) 2,725,000
Olivier Ferrero (France) 1,715,000

We’ve seen Amirov before. This will be the sixth time he has cashed in an EPT Main Event. Just last year, the businessman from Baku finished in 40th place here in Prague. While he has racked up nearly $800,000 in live winnings over the past half-decade, he is on track to crush his prior best result, a €105,336 cash for a third place in the €3k Berlin Cup High Roller back in Season 9.

While Amirov won the most exciting hand of the day, he’ll be up against Russia’s Gleb Tremzin who dispatched Marc Macdonnell (the man who started the day with the cheap lead) in a massive boat-over-boat cooler that was good enough, for a time, to move Tremzin up to second place in the counts.

Tremzin, 27 and known as Ti0373 online, hails from Arkhangelsk, one of the northernmost cities on the planet. Tremzin is an online monster who has three WCOOP titles to his name. He’s looking to be Russia’s fourth EPT Main Event champion.

Right now, it’s Amirov and Tremzin’s tourney to lose, but they’re not far enough ahead to count out the others, including Germany’s Thomas Butzhammer (who finished 16th here last year) and 51-year-old Hossein Ensan who is enjoying his third Main Event final nine appearance in the last 16 months.

Ensan will have some familiar company at the final table. Bulgaria’s Slaven Popov was at Ensan’s final table in Season 11’s Barcelona event. Ensan finished third to Popov’s eighth. Read more about how rare this second table final table meeting is here: Not since the days of Thew and Vaswani…

Finally, none of them should count out France’s Olivier Ferrero, the 33-year-old for Marseille who is in the middle of his best-ever live tournament poker run. His winnings have already eclipsed his lifetime total.

Play resumes at 1pm CET tomorrow, but for security reasons, the EPT Live stream and our EPT Main Event live coverage will begin exactly one hour later at 2pm CET.

Join us then when we’ll find out whether Amirov’s domination will continue.

Until then, good night from Prague.

To catch up with the rest of our coverage from EPT Prague, check out any of the links below:

MAIN EVENT LIVE COVERAGE
10K HIGH ROLLER COVERAGE
SIDE EVENT REPORTS
SIDE EVENT RESULTS

Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging.

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This EPT is brought to you by PokerStars, the official sponsor of the European Poker Tour. Win your way into the biggest events Europe has to offer at Europe.

They are getting pretty close to a final table in Prague, with nine left and one to bust until it is set. Obviously nobody is 100 percent safe—there’s no such thing as a certain lock on a final table appearance—but something very rare could be about to occur.

Slaven Popov and Hossein Ensan have seen each other before. Indeed, in Barcelona at the start of last season, the Bulgarian and the German ended up sitting around the final table of the EPT Main Event, which was eventually won by Andre Lettau.

Ensan was third and Popov eighth, both earning the largest cashes of their careers.

Popov and Ensan are again sitting at the same table here in Prague, among the final nine in another main event. It means they might be about to go back to a second final table together.

According to our research (and by “our” research, I mean that of Jan Kores, media coordinator) the last time the two players reached two final tables together was in season one. Julian Thew and Ram Vaswani both made the final tables in Copenhagen and Dublin. It hasn’t happened since.

Obviously plenty of players have been to two final tables, and Ensan has been to another one since Barcelona (in Malta). We’ve even now had a double winner.

But two players getting to two final tables together? That’s rare. Very rare indeed.

We’re keeping up with the side events action on the side events page and the results are on the side events results page.

There’s also the High Roller. That’s on the High Roller page.

This EPT is brought to you by PokerStars, the official sponsor of the European Poker Tour. Win your way into the biggest events Europe has to offer at Europe.

Right about the time that hand was happening on the EPT Main Event feature table, there was a tournament going on in the lobby area from which that hand might have been borrowed.

The “all in or fold” tournament had its debut here in Prague today and it’s another one that does precisely what it says on the tin. All players pay an ante, but there are no blinds, and in the pre-flop betting round, players are allowed to check or call. However once the flop is down, it’s not very complicated: it really is all in or fold.

Based on a very small, but clearly representative, sample size, there’s a very clear pattern to the play. Unless sitting with a monster, everybody checks pre-flop, and then quite often everybody folds post flop too, giving the player on the button a walk.

It’s pretty difficult to get much value if you flop a monster too. When they had all checked to a flop of 9910, Bjorn Verbahel tried to trick his table-mates by announcing a bet of 400. It was, however, all in and everybody knew that, and everybody folded.

“Full house only,” Verbahel said, showing 910.
“You should check,” a table-mate said.
“I wish you can,” Verbahel said.

This tournament attracted 44 players, paying €100 each plus unlimited €50 rebuys. The prize pool swelled to €4,268. The side-event regulars Benny Glaser and Esh Hadaya have taken their seats.

In addition to the €10,000 High Roller and these last moments of the penultimate day of the Main Event, the other main attraction here is a €1,000 Deepstack tournament, which has attracted 146 players.

The roll call is pretty extraordinary: Ole Schemion and Mike McDonald are on the same table, Adrian Mateos, Javier Rojas, Kitty Kuo, Jan Bendik, Mayu Roca, Martin Finger, Sergio Aido, Mike Telker, Frank Williams, Alex Goulder and Peter Eichhardt are among the others involved.

Dermot Blain is also at the table in this one, and he was watching the EPT Live action on his iPad when that hand got under way at the Main Event feature table. They were between hands at the time it played out and so Blain put his iPad on the table where everybody could see and nine men, including the dealer, huddled around it to watch, pausing their own tournament to see how it played out about 10 yards away.

Javier Gomez, who was one of the three knocked out by Ilkan Amirov in that hand came over to commiserate with Aido and Mateos before getting paid out. Meanwhile the players who still had chips (albeit in another tournament) played one more hand before being sent on a tournament break.

In terms of number of events being played, the EPT Prague poker festival is gradually winding down. But there’s still a lot going on if you know where to look.

We’re keeping up with the side events action on the side events page and the results are on the side events results page.

There’s also the High Roller. That’s on the High Roller page.

This EPT is brought to you by PokerStars, the official sponsor of the European Poker Tour. Win your way into the biggest events Europe has to offer at Europe.