When play began on Friday at the latest stop on the PokerStars European Poker Tour’s (EPT) Season 8 schedule, the EPT Madrid Main Event was down to just 24 players, with a handful of well-known poker pros in the running for the title, and the nearly €550,000 first-place prize-money.

Attendance took a nosedive at the event, likely caused by a combination of Black Friday and a struggling Spanish economy, but there were still 477 players willing to part with the €5,000 buy-in to take part in the tournament.

Heading into Day 4 of the Main Event it was Joao Paulo Simao who held the chip-lead, with nearly 2 million chips. Simao’s closest competitors for the chip-lead, and the only other players to crack the 1 million chip-marks, were Ilan Boujaneh and Bruno Lopes both sitting on roughly 1.1 million chip-stacks.

However, slightly further down the leader-board, but still in the Top 10 were a pair of well known poker players in Mike “Timex” McDonald and Taylor “Ambigiousity” Paur, both of whom have turned incredible online poker careers into incredible careers at the live tournament tables in recent years. Other players still in the hunt are Nicholas Levi and Tristan Clemencon. Paur has the unenviable task of sitting to the right of Mike McDonald on Friday, which could make it extremely difficult for him to advance to the final table.

Here is a look at the chip counts and seating assignments for the final 24 players in the EPT Madrid Main Event.

Table 1:

* Seat 1: Jean-Pierre Petroli — 307000

* Seat 2: Fraser Macintyre — 717000

* Seat 3: Siyu Sha — 848000

* Seat 4: Andrei Stoenescu — 263000

* Seat 5: Clayton Mozdzen — 783000

* Seat 6: Nicolas Levi — 526000

* Seat 7: Tristan Clemencon — 395000

* Seat 8: João Paulo Simão — 1973000

Table 2:

* Seat 1: Frederik Jensen — 410000

* Seat 2: Javier Dominguez — 161000

* Seat 3: Yury Gulyy — 235000

* Seat 4: Ben Spraggons — 245000

* Seat 5: Juan Navarrete — 516000

* Seat 6: Ivan Tikhov — 614000

* Seat 7: Borge Dypvik — 179000

* Seat 8: Jason Duval — 946000

Table 3:

* Seat 1: Jordi Martinez — 284000

* Seat 2: Bruno Lopes — 1103000

* Seat 3: Ricardo Ibanez Rodriguez — 635000

* Seat 4: Ilan Boujenah — 1153000

* Seat 5: Yordan Dimitrov — 227000

* Seat 6: Ruben Setien Herrera — 175000

* Seat 7: Taylor Paur — 734000

* Seat 8: Mike McDonald — 883000

The field will play down to the final table of 8 players on Friday, at which point they will call it a day and return to the Casino Gran Madrid on Saturday to crown a champion.

Tags: Black Friday, Bruno Lopes, EPT, Joao Paulo, Juan Navarrete, Leader Board, Macintyre, main event, Mike McDonald, Nosedive, Online Poker, Petroli, poker players, Poker Pros, prize money, Season 8, Seat 6, Seating Assignments, Simao, Spanish Economy

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