Mike McDonald Leads Entering Day 3 of EPT Madrid

While many Canadians are busy playing in major tournaments on home soil, others are trying their luck in some of the biggest tournaments overseas. The European Poker Tour circuit has been popular with Canadians who continue to excel at the Series’ many and exotic tournament stops over the past 8 seasons.

The EPT is currently in Madrid, Spain where the Main Event is entering Day 3 and is down to 112 players out of the 477 players entered. Mike McDonald from Waterloo, Ontario is the man with the chip lead going into Day 3. The total prize pool is €2,313,450 with 72 players getting paid and a top prize of €545,000 for the winner.

Canadian Mike McDonald has prior EPT successes to his credit with a win at the 2008 EPT in Dortmund, Germany, the biggest win of his career worth over €933,600, several side event cashes at various EPT events and just last December a 2^nd place finish at the Main Event at the EPT Prague worth €112,700 on top of 3 additional cashes in Prague earlier that week, one of them at the World Poker Tour. Mike’s win in Dortmund made him the youngest player at the time at just 18 years old to win an EPT. Mike is now 22.

The tournament is still not over but Mike has a nice chip lead, trailing him closely is Frederik Jensen of Denmark.

Four other Canadians are still in the tournament with a good shot of making it in the money: Yann Dion of Quebec who returned from the 2012 Aussie Millions with a 7^th place finish worth $178,778, Clayton Mozdzen of Stonewall, Manitoba, a former Station Poker Classic winner in 2008, a great event hosted in Regina and just around the corner, as well as Jason Duval also from Quebec and Matthew Wood from Whitby, Ontario.

All four have won their EPT Madrid package by playing qualification satellites on PokerStars, the best way to score an EPT Main Event experience and there are still packages to be won for this season by registering here.

Here are the top chip counts entering Day 3 of 2012 EPT Madrid: