After an impressive week that saw Sahamies finish fourth in the €50k Super High Roller and dominate the leaderboard virtually every day of the main event, the notorious high-stakes gambler has just seven other players to dispatch to earn his first major EPT title.
Sahamies will have 7,885,000 chips to start the final table tomorrow – 1.4 million ahead of second-place local hope Samuel Rodriguez and over 3 million up on the rest of the field.
Juanda Still Alive But Relatively Short
A significant hurdle Sahamies may still have to overcome is poker icon John Juanda.
Like Sahamies, Juanda has been dominant for much of the main event to this point but fell off the pace slightly today on Day 5.
Coming into the day with 1.6 million in chips and sixth overall, Juanda barely moved ahead and will enter the final table now seventh in chips with 1,890,000.
Still, it could be worse. He has 31 big blinds to play with and he’s not the true short stack – that title belongs to young Finn Joni Jouhkimainen with 1,510,000.
A mix of Eastern European players all in line for their first big scores round out the final eight including Lithuanian Anaras Alekberovas (4,430,000), Belarussian Mikalai Pobal (4,410,000), Czech Antonin Duda (3,445,000) and Romanian Anton Sinel (2,355,000).
Schemion Bubbles; Karamalikis and de Melo Just Miss
German Ole Schemion was the unfortunate final-table bubble boy after a lengthy three hours of nine-handed play.
Sitting with around 1.2 million, Schemion shoved over top of a 130k Sahamies open and his A♦ K♦ couldn’t catch Ilari’s pocket eights.
Australian Jonathan Karamalikis, second in chips heading into the day, came up short in 11th place for €46,700 when his queens were cracked by Schemion’s AQ.
PokerStars pro Fatima Moreira de Melo also made a deep run but dropped out in 16th place for a career-best €34,650 payday.
Also falling in the final 24 were Lucille Cailly (21st – €29,400) and Roberto Romanello (22nd – €29,400).
Final table action picks up tomorrow at the Gran Casino starting at 1 pm local time with €1,007,550 on the table for the winner.
Catch the live updates in the PokerStars blog or watch the final table streaming on a one-hour delay in our blog section.
The final eight and chip counts:
1. Ilari Sahamies 7,885,000 2. Samuel Rodriguez 6,450,000 3. Anaras Alekberovas 4,430,000 4. Mikalai Pobal 4,410,000 5. Antonin Duda 3,445,000 6. Sinel Anton 2,355,000 7. John Juanda 1,890,000 8. Joni Jouhkimainen 1,510,000Visit www.pokerlistings.com