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The €10,300 High Roller started with 21 players and played down to the winner, and many expected a really long day at the tables, but the 6 bustouts in the first 30 minutes made it clear that players were not afraid to put chips in the pot.
Angel Guillen busted in the first hand, and was quickly followed by Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Nicolas Chouity and Juha Helppi, and a bit later by Dario Sammartino.
On the way to the final table, Joao Vieira, Agshin Rasulov, Dylan "ImaLucSac" Linde, Alexander Roumeliotis and Dmitry Yurasov busted, with Maxim Panyak finishing in 9th place to create the official final table.
Ihar Soika held the chip lead for most of the finale, he had 30% of the chips in play at a certain point, which is quite a feat against this strong competition.
Carlos Chadha was the first one eliminated, he got it in with Q8 suited against Stephen Chidwick's 66 and failed to improve on the KK394 board.
Chidwick's couldn't get much going after this, he lost a AK vs. KK preflop all-in and a AQ vs KK preflop all-in, then jammed his final chips with KQ into Ismail Erkenov's AQ, and he lost this hand as well to bust in 7th place.
Stephen "stevie444" Chidwick
On the other end of the spectrum was Jason Mercier, who started the day as a shortstack, but managed to get lucky multiple times, he doubled with AT against AA and was also on the good end of the AK vs. KK situation against Chidwick.
The 6th place finisher was Marc-Andre Ladouceur, who lost a coinflip for all his chips against Ami Barer with AJ against TT. Benjamin Pollak finished in 5th place, he jammed with 9-10 of spades over the raise of Ihar Soika, but Soika snapcalled with AA and Pollak didn't manage to get there.
Ami "UhhMe" Barer finished in 4th place, he jammed over a reraise from Mercier with AJ, but unfortunately for him, Mercier's good run continued as he picked up AA and the best hand held up.
Jason Mercier
Ismail Erkenov busted in 3rd place, he reraised before the flop, bet the flop, check/called the turn and the river with A2 on a board of AJT5J, with 3 diamonds, but it was no good, as Soika showed a flopped straight with the KQ.
The heads-up battle ended not much later, Mercier jammed over a reraise from Soika with 66, Soika made the call with A9 and managed to catch one of his overcards on the AT352 board.
Jason Mercier stated that he was very happy with his result and that he had most of his own action. Mercier started the finale as the short stack but thanks to a few lucky hands he managed to climb into second place for €473,500, while Ihar Soika won the biggest EPT High Roller ever for almost €750,000.
Ihar Soika
Final results:
- Ihar Soika €747,200
- Jason Mercier €473,500
- Ismail Erkenov €342,400
- Ami Barer €276,900
- Benjamin Pollak €219,000
- Marc-Andre Ladouceur €168,600
- Stephen Chidwick €125,600
- Carlos Chadha €90,900