Dan Smith Takes Down The 2012 PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona Super High Roller 50k Event

On Sunday Dan Smith celebrated a €962,925 payout as well as the first EPT title of the year. He came through a difficult final table that included such names as JC Alvarado, Ilari Sahamies and Erik Seidel to take down the title.

The final table started out a little bit skewed as the top three players already owned around 80 percent of the total chips between them. Smith had 5,108,000, Mike McDonald with 4,650,000 and JC Alvarado holding 3,116,000, which meant they were much further ahead of the rest of the table.

In fact, most of the short stacks actually only had about 20 big blinds to work with, they would all be fighting to at least improve on their positions and make a higher pay grade.

Into The Action

Eliminations were expected early because of these short stacks, yet it actually took a while for the first one to materialize. It wasn’t until the second level of play for the day that we finally saw elimination; Smith was the man to take the first scalp when he took out Jim McCrink when he hit a flush with his Kh, 8h to beat down McCain’s pocket nines.

Once that happened the eliminations started to flow a bit quicker with Talal Shakerchi being knocked out in seventh place. He was chasing as he had an open ended straight draw which didn’t materialize to beat Sahamies top pair.

Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel would be the next to go in sixth place, followed closely by Mike McDonald when his A,10 didn’t improve to beat Smith’s A,J. Forth place went to Ilari Sahamies as he was unfortunate to lose with an A,Q suited against Smith’s A,10.

We were now left with the final three which was soon to be just two. Mike Watson continued the trend of being ahead preflop but losing out on the community cards, his A,8 not connecting whilst Alvarado hit a Q to give his K,Q the upper hand and a place in the final two.

Heads Up

Though Smith had a 5-3 chip advantage going into the heads up phase, he still decided to cut a deal with Alvarado. They agreed that he would take €862,925 whilst Alvarado would pocket €788,675 leaving just 100k and the bracelet to play out for.

Alvarado did actually manage to take the lead at one point, though only temporarily. The final hand saw a classic A,K versus K,K in which an ace showed to give Smith the extra 100k and the Shamballa bracelet.

Here are the final standings and payouts:

1st Dan Smith €962,925*

2nd JC Alvarado €788,675*

3rd Mike Watson €399,500

4th Ilari Sahamies €291,900

5th Mike McDonald €215,100

6th Erik Seidel €153,600

7th Talal Shakerchi €138,300

8th Jim McCrink €122,960