Vitalijs Zavorotnijs And Eric Sfez Lead Final Six In Wpt Barcelona

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The six-handed final table of the WPT Barcelona Season XVII €3,300 Main Event is set and all remaining six hopefuls, from six different countries, have already locked up €120,000 for their efforts. In fact, the top 11 finishers out of a field of 1,227 entries hail from 11 different countries to showcase a very diverse end of the tournament.

Leading the final six at the end of Day 4 is Latvia’s Vitalijs Zavorotnijs (pictured), who bagged up 10,635,000 and edged past France’s Eric Sfez (10,265,000) with the elimination of Martins Adeniya in 7th place. There are two medium stacks in Niko Koop (6,305,000) and Boris Kolev (5,025,000), while Jerry Odeen (2,605,000) and Alain Zeidan have 22 and 16 big blinds respectively at their disposal.

After a stalemate prior to the dinner break, Koop was responsible for back-to-back eliminations to reduce the field to the final seven and the German, who was born in Russia and currently lives in Vienna, increased his chances significantly to become the next WPT Champions Club member.

Among the final 24 that returned to their seats for Day 4, only Marcin Wydrowski already had a WPT title to his name. Wydrowski joined the WPT Champions Club in Prague back in 2012, and his elimination in 17th place ensured that a new WPT Champion will be crowned at Casino Barcelona on Sunday, March 17th, 2019.

Final Table Seat Assignments

Seat Player Country Chip Count Big Blinds
1 Eric Sfez France 10,265,000 86
2 Alain Zeidan Lebanon 1,975,000 16
3 Vitalijs Zavorotnijs Latvia 10,635,000 89
4 Boris Kolev Bulgaria 5,025,000 42
5 Jerry Odeen Sweden 2,605,000 22
6 Niko Koop Austria 6,305,000 53

Only 24 players returned for the penultimate tournament day and among the early casualties were Paul-Francois Tedeschi, Robert Bickley and, partypoker MILLIONS UK champion Ioannis Angelou-Konstas. The Greek, who also two WPTDeepStack titles in Europe to his name, came up short of another victory on the World Poker Tour when his jack-nine ended second-best to the ace-king suited of Alain Zeidan.

The bid of Marcin Wydrowski to claim a second WPT Main Event title to his name ended just shy of the two-table redraw. Wydrowski had doubled his short stack once, but couldn’t do so again with ace-five suited against the pocket sixes of Antal Mezei.

Luca Marchetti could not get there with a flush draw to crack pocket aces, while Jakob Madsen saw his pocket queens cracked by ace-trey suited. The next player to make a move was Kamil Lewandowski, but Alain Zeidan looked through his bluff and made the call with ten-nine suited for a pair of tens.

The elimination of Juan Arango reduced the field to the last 12 and several players doubled to remain in contention. Eventually, Arnaud Enselme saw his hopes crushed by a two-outer and the unofficial final table was set only a few minutes later after the departures of Antal Mezei and David Hu. Mezei three-bet jammed with king-queen into queens and Hu used all his remaining three time banks on the other table to wait for the outcome of that showdown and secure the pay jump.

Down to the last nine, Jason Tompkins doubled twice and Martins Adeniya tripled up once. Eric Sfez and Vitalijs Zavorotnijs cemented their positions at the top of the leaderboard and nine players remained at the dinner break. The fireworks started right when everyone was back, as Niko Koop sent Jon Gurrutxaga and Tompkins to the rail in consecutive all-in showdowns. First he turned a straight with jack-nine suited versus ace-five and then spiked a set of fives to crack the pocket jacks of Tompkins.

Not even 20 minutes later, Adeniya got his short stack in with king-ten suited and Vitalijs Zavorotnijs looked him up with ace-king. On a king-high board, the kicker played and the Brit had to miss out on the feature table spotlight.

The final day will get underway at approximately 12 p.m. local time with 1:03:05 left in level 32 with blinds of 60,000-120,000 and a big blind ante of 120,000. As part of the six-handed format, the blind level duration will revert back to 60 minutes each and that will be cut in half during the heads-up stage. All players receive eight 30-second shot clocks for the final showdown and the Action Clock by Protection Poker is in play.

Remaining Payouts

1st place: €600,000*
2nd place: €375,000
3rd place: €281,570
4th place: €215,000
5th place: €160,000
6th place: €120,000

The live stream will run on a security delay of 30 minutes with hole cards displayed and the WPT.com team will provide hand-for-hand coverage of the action until a champion is crowned.