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Iliya Iliev leads 30 in EPT National Prague

The 2018 European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague hosted by PokerStars Live is a 12-day festival, started on 7^th December at the iconic Casino Atrium in the picturesque capital city of Prague, Czech Republic. The series is sprinkled with a variety of tournaments being hosted to suit all kinds of pockets and players.

The first event of the series is already in the books, where Turkey’s Akin Tuna won the €10,300 NLH Event. The €1,100 EPT Prague National Event saw its Day 2 yesterday. The event attracted a huge field of 2,486 entries in all, out of which only 373 players played on Day 2. The chip leader to emerge out of Day 2 was Bulgaria’s Iliya Iliev (pictured above) with 8,820,000 chips. Simultaneously, Andras Nemeth s the chip leader in another tournament – The €50,000 Super High Roller.

Iliev had a good run after the dinner break, saying, “I’m very tired, for two days I didn’t see a single pocket pair. Then today there were three big pots. I had aces in back-to-back hands and then in the next two hands queens – twice!” The Bulgarian player has a couple of recorded live pay-outs but entering Day 3 with the chip lead is a boon to his career and shipping the event will enhance his bankroll even further, enabling him to sign up for other big tournaments.

Day 2 of the National Event began at 12 pm local time and saw a little over nine hours of action-packed gameplay. The eliminations were happening at neck-break speed. Over 150 players got eliminated after only one and a half hour of play. Some notables to exit early include the French players Boubekeur Benhalima (339^th) and Antoine Labat (323^rd), Dutchman Kees van Brugge (300^th) and Canada’s Ari Engel (232^nd).

Another Canadian pro Parker Talbot (214^th) was the next notable to be eliminated in the gush of eliminations that happened. He lost a significant pot and was left with only six big blinds. He lost with Queen-ten against pocket Aces on a ten-king-jack-deuce-seven board.

A lot of known players didn’t make it till the dinner break, including Martin Kabrhel (175^th), Dimitar Danchev (172^nd), Vojtech Ruzicka (166^th), Sebastian Malec (134^th), Sofia Lovgren (115^th), Martin Finger (93^rd), Jan-Eric Schwippert (85^th) and Mihai Manole (78^th).

There were only ten one-hour levels to be played on the day, but the eliminations came at an incredible rate, which made the staff announce that they would play down to the end of level 27 or until they were 32 players left. Indo-Canadian Harpreet Padda eliminated two players, Andreas Vlachos and Laurence Fleury, and is in the top 10 chip counts at the end of the day. Another elimination happened at a different table, where Aleksander Da Silva Boski fell, making the Day 3 a field of 30 instead of the decided 32.

Final 10 Chip Counts –

1. Iliya Iliev – 8,820,000
2. Preben Stokkan – 7,700,000
3. Jean-Noel Thorel – 5,900,000
4. Boris Mondrus – 4,700,000
5. Eli Fagundes – 3,780,000
6. Mohamad El-Rais – 3,557,000
7. Peter Turmezey – 3,085,000
8. Georgios Kitsios – 2,965,000
9. Harpreet Padda – 2,960,000
10. Ali Al Saidy – 2,930,000

Keep reading GutshotMagazine.com for more EPT Prague updates and poker news from around the world.

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