Eric Sfez Tops EPT Deauville High Roller Day 1
The PokerStars.fr European Poker Tour Deauville €10,300 High Roller attracted 122 entrants at Casino Barrière, consisting of 101 unique players and 21 reentries, to beat last year’s record-breaking field of 115 entrants.
France’s Eric Sfez finished the day as chip leader after 10 one-hour levels of play gathering 315,300 in chips. Not far behind him was Jonathan Little from the US with 283,100 and in third place was Ivan Luca from Argentina who bagged up 244,300.
Sfez grabbed the lead in one of the last hands of the day when he held the 
and led the flop and turn before eventually calling a big river shove on a final board of 
. Sfez took his time to make the call but celebrated in relief when Nikolaus Teichert showed him just the 
.
There was plenty of action at every table all day long with three- and four-bets before the flop a common occurrence, as the high rollers engaged in a succession of levelling wars with seemingly nobody wanting to get bluffed. One man who was bluffed was Davidi Kitai after he bet the river of a 
board and faced a shove from the shorter-stacked Amir Mozaffarian. Kitai sensed something was up and took several minutes to fold before being shown the 
for air. Kitai said he was very close to calling with queen high, something he has done in the past.
At the other end of the spectrum, Vladimir Troyanovskiy check-raise shoved the turn on a board of 
holding the 
only to be shown the 
of Piotr Franczak. Troyanovsky was on the verge of his second and final elimination until the case hit the river to save him.
"I thought you were bluffing," Troyanovskiy giggled.
Defending champion Dominik Panka fired two bullets on Day 1, but he couldn’t make it to the end. Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier fired one bullet and has the chance to reenter before play starts on Day 2, and other notables who failed to make it through included Dario Sammartino, Rhys Jones, and Leonid Markin.
Some of the notables who did make it through to Day 2, however, included Joao Vieira (174,100), Ivan Soshnikov (137,900), Robin Ylitalo (127,300), and Team PokerStars Pro Eugene Katchalov (124,700).
Action will resume Friday at 12 p.m. local time and registration will stay open until 15 minutes before the start of play. For that reason the seat draw will not be made available until registration has closed. Details of the biggest-ever EPT Deauville High Roller prize pool will be released shortly after play resumes and PokerNews will bring you all the details of that as well as all the action from the felt as 10 more levels of poker get underway on the penultimate day of the tournament.
![[user38873]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
turn for 11,000 and Panka called to see the 
on the river. Quintas moved all in for effectively 28,000 and Panka called to muck when he was shown 
for two pair by Quintas.
. Panka had 
and got there with a 
for two pair
river was a brick and that shipped the pot to Andreev. Dimitar Danchev lost the remainder of his short stack and Rui Ferreira on the same table as Andreev is crippled with only a fraction of the starting stack left over.
