EPT Grand Final High Roller and Day 1A

The final stop on this season’s European Grand Tour – the EPT Grand Final in Madrid – continued to play host to some headline-worthy action this weekend. The EPT Grand Final high roller event came to a surprising (but not too surprising) end just as the Main Event was kicking off, and there were plenty of old familiar faces surfacing at the top of the chip counts for both games.

Despite early reports that the EPT Grand Final high roller was all but won by Day 1 leader Viktor Blom and then by final table leader Galen Hall, one tenacious pro ground his way from the back of the pack to snatch up the High Roller title and its top €525,000 payout. That player was none other than previous high roller champion Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier.

In the end, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom didn’t even make it to the high roller final table. For that matter, neither did Tom Dwan, Jonathan Duhamel, Jason Mercier or Vanessa Selbst. Here are the final eight players by order of place: 

Bertrand Grospellier – €525,000

Benny Spindler – €316,000

Juha Helppi – €185,000

David Sands – €135,000

Vanessa Rousso – €100,000

Alex Repik – €72,000

Galen Hall – €57,500

Peter Jetten – €45,000

In related news, the EPT Grand Final Main Event started its first day of qualifying action even as the high roller was ending. A total of 302 players bought into the first day of the last big EPT event of Season 7, but less than half of those competitors will return for Day 2. Day 1B is expected to draw even more entries with some tournament watchers predicting a field of as many as 400. Thus far, the early Grand Final leaders are a pretty impressive group.

While David Sonelin is the man to beat at the end of Day 1A with 275,900 chips, four other players managed to crack the 200,000 landmark. Those four players are Brian England, Ben Wilinofsky, Alex Gomes and Lucien Cohen. All five of the leaderboard toppers have posted significant cashes this year while Wilinofsky is no doubt feeling pretty good about his skills having also recently won the EPT Berlin Main Event.

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