The tables of the Aviation Club de France were the home for day two of the WPT Grand Prix de Paris. The chairs creaked underneath the weight of 167 players and the tables creaked under the weight of over 9 million chips. At the end of the day, one table in particular was feeling the effects of the day and that was table five. Seated at that table were McLean Karr, Frederic Magen, Franck Pepe and Ali Daher and between them they had 1.3 million in chips.
The chip leader did in fact come from table five and it was Franck Pepe. The French pro ended the day with 432,000 chips and the bulk of them were won in two separate pre flop all-in encounters. In the first encounter Pepe eliminated Raphael Kroll when his [ax][kx]held against [ax][qx]and then in the second encounter Pepe eliminated an unnamed opponent when his [qx][qx]held up against [tx][tx]. Both pots were in excess of 100,000 and it was a case of a good days work for Pepe who started the day with 83,700.
Only one other player managed to sneak past the 400k mark and that was the current French Poker Tour Champion Christophe Lesage. Lesage, who finished with 401,000 chips, played excellent poker all day, and in fact was the chip leader for most of the latter part. Alexandre Brivot and Dori Yacoub both had deep runs the last time the WPT was at the ACF. Brivot finished runner-up to Natalya Nikitina in the EFOP Diamond Championship/WPT National Series and Yacoub finished 13th in that same event. Both Brivot (339,400) and Yacoub (370,100) ended the day mixed in the top of the pile.
The starting day chip leader was Mikko Sundell and although he didn’t finish as the chip leader he remains in the top five with 334,500 chips. We reported yesterday that there was a strong American contingent at Paris, and although we lost a lot of them today, two of them remain in the top ten. McLean Karr was a human wrecking machine today and was responsible for the eliminations of players of the quality of Ludovic Lacay and fellow countryman Olivier Busquet. Karr who is on red hot form, coming off the back of two tournament victories in August, finished the day with 323,400 chips. The other American was Matthew Waxman. Waxman, who has a WSOP circuit event under his belt as well as two WPT cashes, finished the day just behind his compatriot with 285,300 chips.
61 players will return on Thursday at 14.00 (CET) to continue their journey towards the summit of WPT Grand Prix de Paris and €500,000 in prize money. At the moment Franck Pepe will be feeling pretty good about himself. He knows how to wade through a WPT field, as he proved when he came second at WPT Amneville last season, and he has enough chips to play some poker so be sure to join us to see if the French Pro can go one step further?
You can read the full story of today’s play on our live updates section here.
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