Friday, 29th March 2024 05:39
Home / Uncategorized / Giacomo Maisto leads last 24 at EPT Snowfest
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As one now late screen goddess once said: “It’s not the having, it’s the getting,” and today that proved a suitably apt quote to pin to the Day 3 action from the European Poker Tour Snowfest main event.

Day 3 is when players scratch and scrape an advantage out of the rock face — as 81 players, seated at 11 tables, were reduced to 24 sitting around just three. To survive tomorrow’s cull to eight a fighting stack of significant weight is now a pre-requisite.

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Getting chips


So today was about compiling the necessary equipment with which to amass further riches tomorrow. It’s not the having that’s important right now, but the getting. Only then do you stand a chance to get even more tomorrow.

Resting well tonight will be several players whose performances today may just have done enough to live up to that blinkered ethos, enough, at least, to take them into the penultimate day.

Giacomo Maisto leads, bagging up 1,548,000 chips tonight, ahead of Iulian Ruxandescu with 1,281,000 and Cristian Tardea with 983,000.

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Chip leader Giacomo Maisto

Maisto, used unorthodox methods to seize the chip lead today, raising with optimism, checking with reckless abandon, calling with a song in his head and folding with reluctance to finish tonight with every chance of reaching the final and giving his victims nightmares. Along the way he overtook former leaders such as Vladimir Geshkenbein (889,000) and Philip Meulyzer (762,000).

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Vladmir Geshkenbein (background)

This chase pack may not be chipped to the teeth, but several have hope in their eyes and perhaps a dream of glory, hot-wiring the circuits in their brains.

Alex Kravchenko returns as the last Team PokerStars Pro in the field, bagging up 379,000 at the close, while former chip leader Martins Adeniya does the same, his hopes packed up in a bag with 402,000 chips in.

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Alex Kravchenko

Pierre Neuville continues to live the beautiful life, returning tomorrow with 335,000, his guaranteed cash finish this week moving him above Jason Mercier on the All-Time EPT Leader board and into ninth place, and all after accidentally taking a dinner break.

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Pierre Neuville

There was similar leader board success for Luca Pagano. It’s not yet clear whether the Team PokerStars Pro’s 51st place finish is enough to move him back to the top, ahead of Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, but regardless, it is further testimony to the Italian’s ability to continually impress with results, his 18th EPT cash.

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Luca Pagano

Alas there will be no double winner at Snowfest. The last hope for any change in that old talking point faded with the departure of Sebastian Ruthenberg and Michael Tureniec. The German Team Pro was out just short of the money while Tureniec abandoned thoughts of back-to-back titles in 65th place.

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Sebastian Ruthenberg


There was good news elsewhere though as PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo recorded her first main event cash, busting in 56th place.

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Fatima Moreira de Melo

Day 3 set out to burst the bubble and whereas we normally spare a thought for the bubble player, departing with nothing to show for two-and-a-half days, the good people of the Alpine Palace did their best to remove some of the pain.

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Florian Wolf of the Alpine Palace

Florian Wolf, co-owner of the hotel, and a poker player himself, presented a surprise gift to the bubble boy Pontus Nima Khosravi, a helicopter ride around the Austrian Alps, a trip that, in terms of busting from a poker tournament, can, from several thousand feet, put the world back into glorious perspective.

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Florian Wolf greets Pontus Khosravi after his elimination

The official overnight chip counts can be found on the relevant page and the prize winners on the prize winner’s page. You can also read all about helicopter rides, bust outs and double ups, and everything else, at the links below…

Level 15 & 16 updates
Level 17 & 18 updates
Level 19 updates

All this, and the bits we missed, are available on our sister blogs, written in German, Dutch, French and Italian. Thanks also to our trusty photographer Neil Stoddart, more than just a photographer, he knows what all the dials and stuff on the top do.

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Hinterglemm

That’s all for Day 3 then. On the day Elizabeth Taylor died we’re now, in tribute, heading off to re-enact scenes from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the hotel bar. Never mix, never worry.

Until 2pm tomorrow, it’s goodnight from Hinterglemm.

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