After all the huffing and puffing we are down to the final eight players.

This afternoon and tonight they will compete for a first prize of £611,520. Which by quick calculation, and not by using an onine currency exhange site, is equal to exactly €875,858.31.

I don’t want to undermine the quality of the players who are left, but at one stage it looked as if we were on course for one of the most exciting final tables in years.  Unfortunately Chris Moneymaker, Roland De Wolfe, Surindar Sunar, Pascal Parault, Tony Cascarino and Alan Smurfit all finished just short of the final table.

That, as they say, is poker.

14th place finisher, Tony “Big Cass” Cascarino, came very close, but he did not get the cigar.

Nevertheless, one of the remaining eight players will become and overnight superstar. We have an interesting array of nationalities at the felt today, but the fans at the Vic will surely be shouting loudest for the two Brits - Paul Mendes and Ian Cox.

And as if two World Wars and a World Cup Final weren’t enough, Cox and Mendes will do battle against two Germans at the final table.  This time however the Germans appear to have the upper hand, Florian Langmann (who looks kind of like The Terminator behind his big shades) is a commanding chip leader, while countryman Marcel Baran is third in chips.

Players from the Lebanon, New Zealand, France and Sweden make up the rest of this cosmopolitan final table.

Good luck to all, by the close of play tonight we will have a winner…

Official Chip Counts
Florian Langmann (Germany) 927000
Joseph Mouawad (Lebanon) 780000
Marcel Baran (Germany) 583000
Josh Egan (New Zealand) 477000
Anthony Lellouche (France) 466000
Paul Mendes (UK) 282000
Ian Cox (UK) 234000
Fredrik Haugen (Sweden) 190000

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Nic, EPT London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.