Last weekend saw the EPT London kick off at the Hilton Hotel and PKR was there to support our Team PKR Pros Adrien 'zlatan35' Allain (who was hoping to repeat his exceptional performance at the APT Macau in August) and Andrew 'golfpro699' Teng.
The competition at this year's EPT London was fierce and a £5,250 registration (equivalent to 17 Big Shot, 34 Masters, or 2094 Phase 1 buy-ins) meant it wasn't for the faint of heart either! Big name stars like JC Tran, Gus Hansen, Annette 'Annette_15' Obrestad, John Juanda, Humberto Brenes, James 'Andy Mcleod' Obst, Dan Harrington, Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Roland De Wolfe were all there in search of top honours.
JC Tran hiding behind his hat - showing off his love for PKR
zlatan35 managed to build a nice stack through the first few hours, then couldn't outdraw A-A after getting it all in post-flop - despite having a tantalising number of outs. This knocked him down to around 15K (half the starting stack).
At the break he said, “I am so bad, why didn’t I fold my KQ pre flop? I would still have 50K, I am out, tournament is nearly over!”
zlatan35 rebounding from a tough hand
Despite the pessimism zlatan35 was able to claw back a respectable 30K in a few hours after the break and he must have felt a renewed sense of optimism when, towards the end of Day one, he peeled up K-K. Raising pre-flop zlatan35 got it all in after the flop with a Q-8-3 rainbow board. Unfortunately the villain turned over 8-8 for the set which held up and sent Allain packing at the end of the first day of play.
Andrew 'golfpro699' Teng ended his tourney early in Day one as well
The EPT has produced some strange sights so far - like snowmen beating cowboys, the Devil (fish) and Jesus (Ferguson) exchanging greetings and Boris Becker's first Ace in 20 years - we don’t know what they put in the coffee at the Hilton Hotel but that’s not right, is it?