Vladimir Krastev Bags Huge Chip Lead Heading into The Final Table

And then there were six!

Just six players remain in the World Poker Tour Vienna Main Event and it’s Austria’s own Vladimir Krastev who leads the way with a staggering 2,379,000-chip stack, or 36% of all the chips. Krastev’s closest competitors, Konstantinos Nanos, has a million chips less.

At the start of the day 17 players were still on contention, and it took 10 hours to lose just 11. It all started when David Boyaciyan, when the Dutchman failed to have his pair of threes hold up against Gaelle Baumann’s queen-nine of clubs.

A little while later Peter Jaksland busted out in 16th followed by Josef Klinger in 15th place. Klinger, a former EPT Grand Final runner up, sits atop the Austrian all-time money list but today was not his day. Klinger started the day second in chips but lost three all ins against Sotirios Koutoupas which send him out the door shy of the final table.

Hans-Joachim Hein busted in 14th followed by, arguably, the biggest star remaining in the field. Frederik Jensen has already won an EPT and a Unibet Open, and a runner-up finish in the Aussie Millions Main Event, but he won’t be adding a WPT title to his resume just yet. Jensen busted in 13th place when his ace-king lost to Andreas Freund’s five-seven offsuit.

After a two-hour the action picked up again when Jan-Eric Schwippert busted in 12th, followed by Fedor Holz in 11th. Both were knocked out by Krastev, who established his chip lead and maintained it from that point on. Holz was the chip leader on Day 1a, Day 3 and second after Day 2, but he did not live up to the expactations. Holz’s third day was disasterious and for a three-hour period he did not win any hands and that lead to his elimination.

After Jitka Seidler busted in 10th place just one lady remained, and the final table was upon us. All players were guaranteed €14,350 and Rumen Nanev was the first one to collect ad the Bulgarian busted in 9th place. Nanev had been short for a while and ultimately lost with king-seven versus Karstev’s ace-queen.

Gerald Karlic’s elimination in eighth place was a memorable one, as the young Austrian pro four-bet before the flop against Konstantinos Nanos holding kings. This however did not go as planned, because Nanos called with ace-ten, floppd an ace, and that’s when the money went in. Karlic took home €19,500 for his efforts and a little while later it was Pascal Hartmann who busted in seventh place.

Hartmann’s heartbreak was what lead us to reaching the final six, as the Austrian ran his ace-king of diamonds into Krastev’s ace-king of hearts. Usuaully this would result in a split pot, but the Krastev hit three hearts and raked in this pot worth over 1.2 million chips.

Here is what tomorrow’s final table chip counts and seat draw look like.

Seat 1 – Vladimir Krastev – 2,379,000
Seat 2 – Thomas Bichon – 593,000
Seat 3 – Konstantinos Nanos – 1,386,000
Seat 4 – Andreas Freund – 521,000
Seat 5 – Sotirios Koutoupas – 1,327,000
Seat 6 – Gaelle Baumann – 382,000