David Kitai leads PokerStars EPT Berlin final table

Posted by Steve Ruddock on Apr 21, 2012 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

The talk of the tournament heading into Day 4 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Berlin Main Event was the three former champions who were still in the hunt for the title, as well as EPT history considering a win by any of the three would crown the first repeat winner in the tour’s eight-year history.

Unfortunately, Kevin MacPhee, Anton Wigg, and Vladimir Geshkenbein all fell short of the final table, with Geshkenbein getting the closest to the final table, before bowing out in 10th place. With no chance for a repeat winner the storylines quickly changed, and one such emerging story is David Kitai. Kitai is the all-time leader in tournament winnings in Belgian, but the longtime poker pro is still in search of his first EPT win.

Kitai used a late surge on Day 4 of the tournament to take the overall chip-lead into the final table, but he’ll have to contend with a pair of solid young players in Andrew Chen and Mario Puccini, and five other relatively unknown final tablists who have proven their poker skills over the course of the tournament.

Kitai’s resume includes a win at the 2009 World Series of Poker and a win in an Invitational World Poker Tour tournament, which due to the invitational nature of the event does not qualify as an official WPT tournament and therefore would not be counted as a leg of the Triple Crown. Kitai has made two other WSOP final tables as well as finishing in 2nd place at the 2011 WPT Rendez Vous a Paris. In all he has earned over $1.7 million during his career, and is looking to add to that total on Saturday.

Andrew Chen is a Canadian poker pro who has come very close to winning a handful of major tournaments in his career. Chen finished in 2nd place at the 2009 WSOP in a $1,500 NLHE tournament, in 3rd place at the 2008 EPT Prague Main Event, 5th place at the 2010 EPT Grand Final, and in 5th place at the LAPT San Jose Main Event in 2008. Chen also won a side event at the 2011 PCA and finished runner-up in the 2012 PCA 6-Max High-Roller tournament. For his career he has earned over $2 million in live tournaments.

Puccini is German online poker pro who has pocketed over $5 million playing online tournaments. With respectable $230,000 in live tournament winnings Puccini is looking for a breakout performance in a major live tournament at the EPT Berlin.

Here is a look at the chip counts the eight remaining players will take into the final table on Saturday:

1. Davidi Kitai – 5,695,000

2. Bahadir Kilickeser – 4,640,000

3. Andrew Chen – 3,600,000

4. Mario Puccini – 2,065,000

5. André Morath – 1,940,000

6. Marc Wright – 1,540,000

7. Cesar Garcia Domínguez – 1,485,000

8. Pratyush Buddiga – 1,280,000

The players will be back in action at Noon local time to play for the first-place prize of €825,000 –the 8th place finisher will receive a respectable €72,000 for their efforts. PokerStars.tv will be streaming the final table live, on a 60-minute delay.

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