The penultimate day of the PokerStars Dublin Poker Festival also happens to coincide with the penultimate day of one of the most coveted tournaments on the EPT - the €10k High Roller Event. Winning this one really gives you street cred amongst the best high stakes tournament grinders around.

Ten levels were played on Day 1 yesterday and another ten today. After three reentries and one new entry before play started, the final number of entries came to 185. The two major stories that stood out today included the end of day chip leader (Sergey Lebedev on 1,522,000) and the bubble boy (Vladas Tamasauskas).

The chip lead changed many times during the day but as the last level wound down, it became a two-way battle between Emil Patel and Lebedev. The latter had always been near the top of the counts whereas Patel had to deal with being a short stack before a late surge. He doubled up in the last level after making a flush to crack Christoph Vogelsangs kings. In the end though, his 1,339,000 wasn't enough to overtake the Russian who also won a crucial last-level pot, turning a set of queens versus Samuel Panzica, who said he had aces. He'll enter Day 3 as favourite for the €397,500 first placed prize (full payout details).

Lithuanian Tamasauskas was a player that must've been extremely confident coming into today. Not only because he won his seat in a live satellite, but also because of a little tournament he won earlier in the festival. The 21-year-old beat 1,001 players to become the UKIPT5 Dublin champion and collected the €176,900 that came with it. He failed to add any more cash to that pile after calling all in on the river of a [5c][7c][jh][8c][2s] board with [ah][7h]. His opponent, Jerry Odeen, had pocket nines and that was that.

Another player who's had an amazing Dublin experience is Dominik Nitsche. He took down the UKIPT High Roller event and came second in the single day €10k High Roller event for nearly €300k. He came back as the chip leader today and cruised into the money but a couple of coolers cost him.

Other notables who cashed but failed to make the final day were: Jeff Gross (16th), Ben Heath (17th), Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier (18th) and Scott Margereson (24th) fresh from his 19th place finish in the EPT Main Event.

Below is how the final 13 line up tomorrow, they'll resume play at 12:30pm. Join us all here then.

Photos by Jules Pochy