Credit to Rick Dacey...

Monte Carlo is the home of many things; the world famous Monte Carlo Casino, the Monaco Grand Prix and the €28 cheeseburger being among them. But if there's one thing that can truly call this majestic old principality its home then it is the high roller. Even the taxi drivers sit behind the wheel of Bentleys here. Put simply there is nowhere else on Earth more appropriate than Monte Carlo for a record breaking EPT High Roller field to take to the felt. An incredible 113 players unfurled €25,000 from their money clips and online accounts to put together a huge €2,825,000 prize pool. We lost many of the good and the great yesterday with the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Viktor Blom, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, Dennis Phillips, Steve Sung, Justin Smith and Carlos Mortensen (just to mention a few) falling during the eleven hours of play yesterday.

Today we came back with forty-one wannabes and they had to be whittled down to eight potential playboys, all of whom are guaranteed an €81,300 payday tomorrow. Our High Roller champion stands to win €956,000 - not bad for three days work. The player leading that charge is Dori Yacoub (1,199,900) and he is closely followed by Tom Marchese (909,000) and Tobias Reinkemeier (826,000). Sorel Mizzi and Olivier Busquet aren't far behind either.

On the fringes of tomorrow's epic final table we had Javier Garcia and Luke Schwartz who will both be thankful they agreed to the suggestion that a €49,500 saver be extended to the ninth and tenth place finishers. Frenchman Antoine Saout bagged himself the return of his €25,000 buy-in with a deal that was made late in the last break of the day - just too late for Matt Marafioti who had been knocked out by Dori Yacoub in 12th place. To be fair, the savers are the least that Garcia, Saout and Schwartz deserve.

For full report go to http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/ept/20...th-069434.html

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Cheers,

Neil
PokerStars Live Events Specialist