Trio Of Champions Grace WPT Marrakech Final Table

The World Poker Tour stop in Marrakech, Morocco, has proven to be highly popular with the European community. As the event enters into its final day of action, three players known throughout the world have made their mark by making the final table.

274 players stepped to the felt, having put up their €3000 to build a nice sized prize pool of nearly €651,000. Of those 274 competitors, 33 players would earn the minimum cash of €5159, but the top prize of €163,493 (roughly $223,803 U. S.) would be in the sights of the final table.

Action on Saturday set up the unofficial nine handed final table and three of the competitors distinguished themselves from the pack. The 2010 World Champion, Jonathan Duhamel, was a one man wrecking crew throughout the day, knocking off Surinder Sunar, Chris Lastiwka and Costa Bataille in a three hand succession. He also took some serious chips off of Jerome Barr and Touhami Zekhnini when, on a K-10-6-5-J board, Duhamel was able to get the duo to call his 85K river bet. Once the former World Champion turned up his rivered straight (holding Q-9), all his opponents could show were a top pair of Kings.

A player who is battling for some of this year’s Player of the Year honors, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, also had a hand in the action. He administered a crippling blow to Said El Yousfi when he held pocket Kings against Said’s pocket Jacks. Once the hand was completed, Grospellier found himself over the 900K chip mark.

Quietly working his way through the tables on Saturday was another Frenchman, Arnaud Mattern. He eliminated Reda Med Jouahri when his pocket eights caught an unnecessary set on the flop to quickly vault up over the million chip mark. Mattern then would spend the rest of the day on cruise control, making it to the nine handed final table.

When action began Sunday afternoon (Morocco time), the final table lined up like this:

Seat 1: Bertrand Grospellier – 904,000
Seat 2: Mohamed Houssam – 1,330,000
Seat 3: Rodney Assous – 813,000
Seat 4: Maksim Martinov – 646,000
Seat 5: Toufik Ourini – 1,054,000
Seat 6: Jonathan Duhamel – 1,126,000
Seat 7: Sebastien Ta – 282,000
Seat 8: Hassan Fares – 1,110,000
Seat 9: Arnaud Mattern – 952,000

Although Houssam held a slight edge over Duhamel, he couldn’t be happy about being pursued by not only the former World Champion but also the likes of Grospellier and Mattern.

Action as of press time has been a bit on the slow side, as none of the men want to miss out on making the official, six handed WPT final table. Duhamel has been active, adding some chips to his stack in one key hand.

After raising pre-flop from the button, Duhamel went to battle with Hassan Fares on a K-7-6 rainbow board. Both players would check to see an eight on the turn and, after Duhamel bet out 63K, Fares made the call. A river nine would get the action going a bit more as Fares bet out 105K, only to have Duhamel make the call immediately and show K-9 for a unnecessarily rivered two pair that put him further in the lead over Fares’ J-9. The hand pushed the Canadian further up the leaderboard.

Mattern has gone on the attack in the early play, taking down a huge pot to assume the chip lead. Battling against Houssam on a 9-6-5-7-4 board, Mattern was able to get the former chip leader to call him down on every street before flashing an 8-7 on the river. The flopped straight was good enough, as Houssam mucked his cards, while Mattern moved to the top of the heap.

It’s been a tough day for “ElkY,” however. After taking a hand from Maksim Martinov in the early going, Grospellier would lose a big hand to Martinov moments later. On a J-9-6 flop, Grospellier led out only to see Martinov drop his remaining stack in the center of the felt. “ElkY” made the call and tabled A-J for top pair, top kicker while Martinov trumped him with a pocket pair of sixes. After no magic hit for Grospellier, he was down to 260K and Martinov moved up to 1.2 million. Roughly forty minutes later, Grospellier was out in eighth place.

At this moment, here are the chip stacks:

Maksim Martinov – 2.4 million
Arnaud Mattern – 1.7 million
Toufik Ourini – 1.6 million
Mohammed Houssam – 1.4 million
Hassan Fares – 1 million
Jonathan Duhamel – 760,000
Rodney Assous – 500,000

Grospellier took home €23,203 for his eighth place finish, while Sebastien Ta earned €21,173 for finishing in ninth.

Action will continue throughout the afternoon in Marrakech as the WPT looks to crown its latest champion.

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Casino poker language:

RING GAME - A standard game where players can come and go as they choose. The opposite of TOURNAMENT.
WHITE BLACKBIRD - A hand so astonishingly rare as to be unworthy of the opponents' consideration, e.g., being dealt a pat royal flush in 5-card draw.
HIGH-LOW SPLIT - Forms of poker in which the pot is split between the best hand and best lowball hand.
STRING BET - An unethical and often illegal means of raising whereby a player puts a call-size stack of chips into the pot and, after observing the reactions of the players, then goes back to his stack and puts out more, thus raising.
SHOWDOWN - The point at the end of the hand where all active players reveal their cards and the pot is awarded to the winner(s).
FIRE - To make the first bet in a betting round. Used to emphasize that the player bet when a check was possible, showing strength.

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