The European Poker Tour’s Polish Open event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Warsaw featured a Day Two with 109 players returning for their chance to move ever closer to the tournament title. With each table jam-packed with uber-aggressive poker pros, it is no surprise that the first 30 minutes of action yielded 15 eliminations. In fact, by the end of level nine, the field had dropped to 62 competitors, which means the field had been cut by 40% in just two levels!

Italian young-gun (and former Magic:The Gathering aficionado) Dario Minieri led the way as his aggressive style complemented the table — a table which was chock full of rail-birds. Minieri continued to grow his stack as he raised virtually every hand, at one point turning over Tc8c after he took down a pot, thanks to a huge pre-flop raise that folded the table. During his hot-streak, Minieri eliminated Frenchman Alain Roy and Italian Americo Spinozzi.

Another notable Frenchman eliminated was Bertrand “ElKy” Grospellier, who had proven as of late that he is a force to be reckoned with in professional tournament poker. Other notable eliminations included Antony Lellouche, Katja Thater, Mark Teltscher, Sebastien Ruthenberg, Pascal Perrault, Richard Gryko, Theo Jorgensen, Remy Biechel, Alain Roy, Jonas Molander, Gavin Griffin, Johnny Lodden, Gino Alacqua, Bertrand Grospellier, Alan Smurfit, Alexander Kravchenko, Thomas Fougeron, Johannes Strassmann, Markus Golser, Luca Pagano, and Nicholas Levi.

The top ten official chip counts are:

1. Sergey Shcherbatskiy (Russia) — 265,900
2. Dario Minieri (Italy) — 211,400
3. Roland de Wolfe (UK) — 169,900
4. Arnaud Mattern (France) — 139,200
5. Uffe Holm (Denmark) — 127,900
6. Juan Manuel Pastor (Spain) — 117,100
7. Nico Behling (Germany) — Germany112,700
8. Kevin MacPhee (USA) — 97,200
9. Ludovic Lacay (France) — 89,100
10. Joao Barbosa (Portugal) — 85,900

Day Three of the event began with 24 players, and similarly to Day Two, that changed quickly as it only took four hours to get down to the final-table of nine players. The last Irish hope, Marty Smyth, went out in 23rd place and Minieri got to work again, eliminating Josh Gould and Stefan Rotach.

Roland De Wolfe was also using his big chip stack aggressively, but his play was not as stellar as Minieri’s. Despite winning a huge suck-out when his A7 hit a river straight against the AJ of Kevin Macphee, De Wolfe was still eliminated in 13th place.

The final table chip counts are as follows:

Seat 1: Arnaud Mattern (France) — 328,000
Seat 2: Ludovic Lacay (France) — 296,500
Seat 3: Andrea Benelli (Italy) — 100,000
Seat 4: Michael Muheim (Switzerland) — 89,000
Seat 5: Joao Barbosa (Portugal) — 123,000
Seat 6: Dario Minieri (Italy) — 359,500
Seat 7: Nico Behling (Denmark) — 343,500
Seat 8: Sergey Shcherbatskiy (Russia) — 349,000
Seat 9: Atanas Gueorguiev (Bulgaria) — 186,500

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