Whoever plans these big poker festivals is one clever cookie.

You see, with Day 1A of the Main Event taking place yesterday, that meant that anyone who had played and survived now wasn't due back until Tuesday for Day 2. Add to the mix the fact that the €25,000 EPT High Roller finished yesterday, and you could have expected a lot of bored poker players searching for something to fill their Monday off.

Yeah, right. Boredom doesn't exist at the EPT. Luckily for those players who just want to keep on playing (i.e. the vast majority), there was a €10,300 High Roller tournament running today that would start and finish all on the same day, meaning they could comfortably play before returning to the Main Event tomorrow. Heck, even if they hadn't played the Main Event yet, they can still buy-in at the start of Day 2!

A total of 66 players decided to pony up the buy-in, and 23 of those exercised their single re-entry option, making it 89 entries in total. That produced a staggering prize pool of €863,300, with a handsome €229,200 going to the eventual winner.

That final table was full of familiar faces, including Dominik Nitsche - who won the UKIPT High Roller last night for €156,560. Nitsche would go on to finish 2nd in this event, but in the end it was the 22-year-old British superstar Charlie Carrel who took it down, fresh off his 3rd place finish in the €25,000 High Roller yesterday €234,100.

Carrel can now add €164,500 to his Dublin winnings, as the final four players made a deal. Here's how the tournament played out over the day (the full updates can be found here).

Every face a name

It was a stacked line up: Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier, PCA 2016 Main Event champ Mike Watson, and €25,000 EPT Dublin High Roller champ Mustapha Kanit were amongst the action, as were Mike McDonald, Steve O'Dwyer, Igor Kurganov, Dzmitry Urbanovich, Martin Jacobson, Adrian Mateos, Timothy Adams, Christoph Vogelsang, Daniel Dvoress, Ryan Riess, and Ben Heath.

Our bubble boy was Daniel Dvoress, who was crippled when he ran jacks into Kevin MacPhee's kings, and busted a few hands later.

Ryan Riess, Kevin MacPhee, Fernando Brito, and Sergey Lebedev were the next to go.

That got us down to a final table of 9, and here's how they stacked up:

Mark Radoja 1,840,000
Dominik Nitsche 1,425,000 
Demetrio Barreca 1,220,000
Senh Ung 1,000,000
Jeff Rossiter 930,000
Charlie Carrel 825,000
Francois Billard 670,000
Viacheslav Goryachev 400,000
Paul Tedeschi 375,000

Viacheslav Goryachev was the first to leave the final table, followed by a crazy double elimination hand. Jeff Rossiter shoved, then Senh Ung shoved, and then Mark Radoja shoved as well!

Rossiter had [ad][qh], Ung had [jd][jc],, but Radoja had them both with [kc][ks], which would hold up, knocking both players out.

Demetrio Berreca went out in 6th shortly after, followed by Paul-Francois Tedeschi in 5th.

When we got to four-handed, the players cut a deal. Here's what they agreed:

Mark Radoja €144,180
Dominik Nitsche €139,450
Charlie Carrel €134,600
Francois Billard €128,120

They left €29,900 plus the trophy to play for, and after a little bit of four-handed play we lost Billard in 3rd. He'd already locked up €128,120 so wasn't too dissapointed!

Three-handed went on for quite some time, taking us into the early hours of the morning. It was Mark Radoja - the man who led for much of this final table following that double-elimination hand - who exited in 3rd, taking home his €144,180. He moved all in from the small blind for 1 million with [qs][6h] and was called by Carrel in the bb with [ac][8s]. The flop paired Carrel's eight and no queen turned up on the turn or river.

Heads up was quite a relaxed affair, with both Carrel and Nitsche fresh off huge scores yesterday. However, both still clearly wanted to win the extra €29,500 and the shiny trophy.

The chip lead changed hands several times, and plenty of bluffs were shown . However, it was two big hands that would settle it.

Nitsche limped on the button and Carrel made it 400,000 to play from his bb. Nitsche didn't waste time shoving for his last 2.1 million and the call from Carrel was even quicker - "Aces!" he said gleefully, turning over [ac][as]. Nitsche had [ah][qd], and the [ts][5d][jc] gave him some hope for a straight. But the [4s] turn and [8c] river were no help whatsoever.

And just like that, we had our champ!

Carrel, Nitsche and Radoja were all talking about whether or not they could still register for the EPT Dublin Main Event tomorrow on Day 2 - which they can in the morning. So don't be surprised if we see them all tomorrow.

We hope we see you tomorrow too! Come back and check out all the action from Day 2 of the Main Event. Goodnight!

€10,300 Single-Day High Roller
Players: 66
Re-entries: 23
Prize pool: €863,300

1 Charlie Carrel (United Kingdom) €164,500*
2 Dominik Nitsche (Germany) €139,450*
3 Mark Radoja (Canada) €144,180*
4 Francois Billard (Canada) €128,120*
5 Paul-Francois Tedeschi (France) €66,480
6 Demetrio Barreca (Italy) €51,800
7 Jeff Rossiter (Australia) €41,000
8 Senh Ung (United Kingdom) €31,940
9 Viacheslav Goryachev (Russia) €24,170

*Indicates a four-handed deal was made

Should we really be surprised how things went today? Probably not. For this was Day 1B, a day that could easily be summed up using the official EPT textbook*, with a well-worn blueprint that goes something like this.

* Seats are filled
* More seats are filled
* People start saying how big the Day 1B field is compared to Day 1A
* Seats begin to empty
* More seats begin to empty
* Play ends

There's another thing to factor into all that, the performance of those who leave the RDS tonight with a bounce in their step, having bagged up the lead, or close to it. Tonight that man is Francisco Correia De Oliveira, who closes on 175,100 with 276 remaining from the field of 442 players today.

Chip leader tonight Francisco Correia de Oliviera

Amid the crowds - and there were crowds today with close to 450 players filling the tournament room - there emerged a few players who jostled for the lead. You might say (and have a point) that the chip lead on Day 1A is seldom a guarantee of anything. But it would talk a player with significant chutzpah to turn the offer down, and Correia De Oliveira rightly can be pleased to have steered his way through a day that was a trial for many.

Any of the 166 players who crashed out today might testify to that. They included the likes of Luc Greenwood, Niall Farrell, Lex Veldhuis (playing his first EPT for more than a year), Katerina Malasidou, Johnny Lodden, Ari Engel, Chance Kornuth, Ruben Visser, Sylvain Loosli, Ludovic Geilich and Thomas Butzhammer.

Katerina Malasidou was out two hands after the dinner break...

...as was Lex Veldhuis

But let's not dwell on the negatives. Plenty of others bagged up chips tonight and will return at 12 noon tomorrow for Day 2 of the Main Event, joining the 79 players who survived Day 1A.

They include:

Francisco Correia De Oliveira- 175,100
Richard Dubini - 157,300
Bernard Dias - 137,600
Alex Difelice - 136,100
Iliodoros Kamatakis - 125,200
Brian Ganon - 106,400
Slaven Popov - 100,100
Jaime Staples - 89,600
Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier - 81,400
Steve O'Dwyer - 55,400
Martin Jacobson - 63,200
Danzer - 69,300
Theo Jorgensen - 16,700
Felipe Ramos - 17,100

Notable among them were the likes of Dubini, Dias, Difelice and Kamatakis, each of whom could easily have snatched the headlines tonight. As it was they did concede that much, but not some serious momentum with which to put to good use on Day 2.
Click here for the day's chip counts.

That means coverage resumes right here on the PokerStars Blog from then, with live updates throughout the day.

But if you're not quite ready to call it a night you can enjoy more High Stakes poker into the small hours, with continued live updates from the Single Day High Roller event, which plays on to a winner tonight. It's usually a late one, but a thriller nonetheless. So grab a coffee, or the caffeinated beverage of your choice, and follow out Single Day High Roller live updates here.

Today was also the final day of the UKIPT Main Event, won in fine style by Vladas Tamasauskas a few hours ago. Read the full story of his victory.

The end of another textbook day on the EPT. Join us again tomorrow.

* There is no EPT textbook

After a one-day hiatus the final UKIPT Main Event of Season 5 came to a conclusion today. After nearly seven levels of exciting play, Vladas Tamasauskas from Lithuania became the latest champion on the tour. He hardly put a foot wrong all day and thoroughly deserves the trophy and the €176,900 that goes with it.

"I felt that I could beat him; the chip lead helped!" said Tamasauskas of his heads up battle with Dave Pollock, but it was two hands before than, involving aces, that really went a long way to helping him take a dominating chip lead into their duel, a position he would never give up.

Four-handed he five-bet all in with pocket aces and scored a huge double up via Pollock who four-bet called with ace-queen. That gave the Lithuanian over half the chips in play and he cemented his position event further when, three-handed, he cracked Mark Reilly's aces to send him home (details below). Pollock fought valiantly and aggressively heads up and got his opponent off some better holdings, but his last aggressive move was one too many. He moved all in with ace high on a board containing two fives and was snap called by Tamasauskas who had flopped trips. Game over.

He said he was both a little tired after the three days of poker, and also "very happy with my achievement, even though I might not look it!"

About the UKIPT itself: "The structure was great, the dealers and staff are great - I couldn't say a bad word about it."

Heads up on the EPTLive stage

The final commenced at 12:30pm and the only British player represented at the table was the first player out. Marc Foggin indicated he was going straight to the bar to get drunk, rather than parlay his money into the EPT Main Event. His fourth final table of the year ended in defeat after his big-slick failed to find a pair on a queen high board. The Geordie has opened from under the gun before Samuel Vousden three-bet with pocket jacks. He did so for value and called when Foggin shoved and leapt into the chip lead as a result.

It took over two hours for the next player to depart as a pattern of chip passing around the table emerged. There were plenty of big hands matching up but none decisive enough to send a player to the rail, until Jelcides Monteiro found himself all in. He can speak six languages but numbers are the same in all of them, and his odds were bad. He moved all in with ace-five and Pollock called with ace-queen, hitting his kicker to decide the hand.

It only took a few more minutes to lose our next player, Quentin Dellis. He had left himself shallow after three-bet-folding a short while earlier. Tamasauskas set him all in with king-three from the small blind, and he called after looking at pocket eights in the big blind, but got unlucky when the board ran king high.

Vousden came into this final table as many people's favourite, due to his Sunday Million and SCOOP wins on PokerStars, but he became the third victim of the level, and another player to fall to Tamasauskas. He was down to 10 big blinds when he called all in with [qd][8d] from the big blind. Unfortunately for the Finn, Tamasauskas opened a flush-dominating [ad][7d], and he hit the rail after a blank board appeared.

The slender chip leader coming into the final was Adalsteinn Karlsson and he departed in fourth place. The 2015 Icelandic Poker Champion's aggressive game got him to the final in pole position but a similar approach cost him in the early stages today. Once short, he never lost heart and took on Tamasauskas in many pots whilst out of position - a period that defined the middle stages of the final. It wasn't to be for him in the end though and his exit hand had an interesting run out, and it inevitably involved Tamasauskas. He moved all in with queen-eight and his Lithuanian nemesis called with pockets eight. Karlsson grabbed the lead on a queen-high flop only for the case eight to appear on the turn to extinguish his hopes.

Mark Reilly's story today was dominated by the amount of big hands he found in the hole. For the most part he used them to make profit but it was the biggest pair of all that cost him his tournament life if third spot. Tamasauskas had limped in from the button with jack-ten and he called after Reilly raised with pocket aces from the small blind. Tamasauskas flopped top two pair and got Reilly all in, and soon all out.

The last two players needed a breather after hard fought battle to get heads up, so they went off for a 75-minute dinner break. They came back fresh and had the tournament wrapped up in less than an hour. To read back through all the action as it happened in (almost) real time, click here.

Here's a reminder of how much each player won today:

This UKIPT Main Event attracted 1,002 players from 50 counties from around the world and Dublin has been an ever-present stop on the tour since the beginning over six years ago. It's hard to think of a better place to bring another amazing season to an end. Thanks to everyone that has played, read the updates and been involved in the best grassroots tour in Europe. Also congratulations to all the Season 5 champions featured below:

London: Rapinder Cheema

Series 1: Chris Young

Nottingham: Sam Mitten-Laurence

Series 2: Giovanni Canali

Marbella: Isidoro Barreña

Bristol: Pierrick Tallon

Isle of Man: Dan Stacey /en/blog/tournaments/ukipt/2015/dan-stacey-wins-ukipt5-isle-of-man-and-2-158329.shtml

Super Series: Dale Garrad

Edinburgh: David Gomez

Series 3: Elliott Panyi

No need to worry about missing the tour too much as Season 6 of the UKIPT is just around the corner. Keep an eye on the UKIPT.com homepage for all date announcements but we can tell you that The London Hippodrome will host the first leg, April 5-10. See you all there!

Photos courtesy of Mickey May

Seat 1: Mark Reilly, Ireland - 845,000

Mark Reilly, 36, has been a poker pro for the last 11 years, mainly playing medium stakes PLO, both cash games and tournaments. The €16,840 he's now guaranteed for making the UKIPT Dublin final table will be the third biggest cash of his live poker career - and brings his lifetime live tournament winnings to nearly $200k. His best live result to date was winning the $1k NL Hold'em Championship at Binions during the World Series in 2014 for nearly $41k. His best result at a PokerStars live event was tenth in a €1k event at EPT Prague in December. Online, he has a Sunday Warm-Up victory under his belt. He said: "I also final tabled a SCOOP or WCOOP event - I actually can't quite remember which!"

Seat 2: Dave Pollock, Ireland (PokerStars Qualifier) - 4,335,000

Dave Pollock, 40, has been commuting (with the exception of last night) back and forth from his hometown Cork in order to participate in the UKIPT Main Event. He's no stranger to a streamed final table, having finished 2nd in the Irish Open in 2014 for €130,500 (although tomorrow's top prize exceeds that). Pollock, a factory worker, has been playing poker for 10 years (live tournaments), and still competes weekly with friends in Cork, although says, "I can't seem to win there, against them. They know me too well!" Here on a UKIPT final table, he says he is more comfortable, and comes back as one of four very close top stacks.

Seat 3: Adalsteinn Karlsson, Iceland (PokerStars Player) - 4,420,000

Adalsteinn Karlsson, from Husavik, Iceland, started playing poker in 2010, first on Full Tilt Poker and then on PokerStars. He's been learning the game since then and only recently started to play live poker. He became the Icelandic Poker Champion in November 2015, beating a field of 140 players for more than £9,000, and this enabled him to take his game on the road. Karlsson competed at UKIPT5 Edinburgh and came third in the Edinburgh cup for £5,225. Away from poker Karlsson is a self-taught computer programmer and likes to travel. He's able to work from his laptop so can take his job on the road. He's been living, on and off, in Thailand for past four years, training in Muay Thai and enjoying life there.

Seat 4: Jelcides Monteiro, Luxembourg - 1,025,000

Jelcides Monteiro will be celebrating not only his first live final table on Sunday, but his first ever live cash. The 28-year-old has been a full time poker player for the last three years but mainly plays cash games. He was born in Cape Verde, a volcanic archipelago lying 500km off the coast of West Africa, but moved to Luxembourg when he was four years old (and now speaks six languages fluently). This isn't his first PokerStars live event - he also competed in the EPT and Eureka Prague Main Events in December but failed to cash. He's had considerable success online though including a deep run in the Sunday Million last week. A few months ago, he finished fourth in the Hot $109, and was then runner-up the following day.

Seat 5: Vladas Tamasauskas, Lithuania (PokerStars Player) - 4,255,000

Vladas Tamasauskas is a 21 year old Lithuanian poker pro who cut his teeth online playing the unusual combination of No Limit tournaments and Razz, before heading out on the live tour. He's only made two trips so far, the first being to the Bahamas (where he could legally play poker before his 21st birthday). At Eureka5 Prague he finished 11th for €19,460 and now here in Dublin he's about to cash for at least €16,840. Tamasauskas intends to stay for the full EPT Dublin Poker Festival (which runs until the 20th February). He may be new to the non-virtual felt but having found friends in Lithuania to discuss strategy with early on, he's comfortable heading into the final a close third in chips.

Seat 6: Marc Foggin, United Kingdom - 2,220,000

Marc Foggin, 32, was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas tomorrow for his friend's birthday and some deep-stack tournaments, but has had to cancel after making the UKIPT Dublin final. Foggin is a semi-professional poker player based in Newcastle who runs a property business with his dad - whom he is debating flying over to watch the final live on Monday. Foggin found the poker room in a casino while trying to hide from a friend of his one night, and having sat down at a table found the game suited him; he has almost $400,000 in live tournament cashes from America to Australia.

Seat 7: Quentin Dellis, Belgium - 4,150,000

Quentin Dellis, a 27 year old poker professional, came to Dublin for the UKIPT and its side events (the PokerStars Cup and High Roller) but has only been able to concentrate on the Main Event. It's worked out well for him; he'll soon add a UKIPT final table prize to his five cashes in EPT side events so far in the last year. Dellis was introduced to poker by friends, thought it was fun, and gradually became intrigued by its intricacies. He's been playing for 5-6 years, professionally for three (mainly tournaments) and although he is a fan of Turbo online tourneys, "can be more patient" when it's called for.

Seat 8: Samuel Vousden - 3,675,000

Born in Hong Kong, Samuel Vousden grew up in Salo, south Finland. He flew under the radar until last December, when he fell just shy of the EPT12 Prague final table finishing 14th and earning €45,930 - his biggest live result to date. Vousden has played only a few live tournaments just and on Monday he'll experience his first ever live final table. However, he's arguably one of the most experienced players among the final eight; he's been crushing the online realm for several years. Vousden has earned opponents' respect on PokerStars, having a Sunday Million title as well as a SCOOP title under his belt. Away from poker, he's a Manchester United supporter, and a big fan of David Beckham.