MAR 05 2010

Team PokerStars Pros still thriving at EPT Berlin

Nearly 500 players turned up for Day 2 of EPT Berlin – hopeful, to varying degrees, of becoming a euro millionaire by the end of the weekend. A day of mass exits however means that the vast majority of them have had to shelve that idea for now.

Only 124 players are returning for Day 3 but the sharply-whittled field includes seven Team PokerStars Pros, with most of them boasting chip stacks well above average.

The current chip leader is Swiss player Stefan Huber who has more than a million in chips (1,087,500) and is nearly 300,000 clear of his nearest rival, Team PokerStars Pro Johannes Strassmann . Huber is an EPT regular and recently won the $5,000 event at the PCA in January for $299,845.

In fourth place is Jude Ainsworth. Ainsworth, from Ireland, only joined Team PokerStars Pro late last year but has gone deep in every EPT he’s played so far. The other Team Pros still in the running for the €1 million first prize are Vlad Zguba from Ukraine, William Thorson from Sweden, Julian Thew from the UK, the “Flying Dutchman” Marcel Luske and German Benjamin Kang.

A total of 945 players from 48 countries competed in the EPT Berlin Main Event - a fiercely-contested, record-breaking €5,300 tournament. Twenty players have already snagged their share of the €4,725,000 prize pool including Team PokerStars Pros George Danzer and Vadim Markushevski.

The tournament – being run in partnership with Casino Spielbank Berlin – is the first EPT to take place in the German capital and the biggest poker tournament ever held in this country.