March 23 2011, Dana Immanuel

When Day 3 of the PokerStars.net European Poker Tour Snowfest got under way, 81 players filled the room and Philip Meulyzer from Belgium had a convincing chip lead – 623,500. His nearest rival, Giacomo Maisto, was more than 100,000 chips behind him. By the end of the day however, Maisto had snatched the lead, bagging 1,548,000, and will go into Day 4 as the man to beat.

Only 72 players made the money in this event, so Day 3 started out with the money bubble looming.

Two former EPT champions made Day 3, but before the money bubble had burst, only one remained. Michael Tureniec, who recently won EPT Copenhagen outlasted 2008 EPT Barcelona winner, Team PokerStars Pro’s Sebastian Ruthenberg. Ruthenberg made his exit just before the money bubble when his jacks failed to hold against Morten Mortensen’s .

Tureniec had a good start to the day, eliminating Tim Finne six places off the money. In the hand, Tureniec spiked an ace and his defeated Finne’s . However, it was not an entirely good day, since he found himself short-stacked after an ill-timed all-in push with against the super-aggressive Vladimir Geshkenbein’s . “There you go, back to Sweden,” Geshkenbein told him, before asking the EPT champion, “Is it your first time playing live?” Tureniec made it into the money but not into Day 4 – he was eliminated in 65th place and took home a min-cash of €5,250.

Curiously, the actual bubble boy was not the unluckiest man in the room. That award went to Sander Benjamins, who had his pocket queens outdrawn by Martins Adeniya’s , leaving the field squarely on the bubble. Benjamins left with absolutely nothing, which was not the case for the actual bubble boy, Pontus Khosravi. Khosravi’s was no good against Kevin Vandersmissen’s when the first card out of the deck was a five. Although he didn’t make any money, the proprietors of the Alpine Palace awarded him a consolation prize of a helicopter ride piloted by Alpine Palace owner Thomas Wolf, in the mountains surrounding Saalbach-Hinterglemm.

Other notable players who made it into the money but no further were Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo in 56th (her first EPT Main Event cash), 2010 WSOP $2,500 NLH bracelet winner Tomer Berda in 41st place, last year’s Snowfest runner up Russell Carson in 31st place, and Jack “Doctor Fun” Powell in 29th.

Another one to bite the Day 3 dust was serial EPT finalist Luca Pagano. His pocket nines failed to hold against Pieter Druif’s and he was reduced to short-stack status. Although Pagano doubled up a little later in the day, he couldn’t fully recover, and exited in 51st place. Pagano will have to wait at least a few weeks to attempt to make his seventh EPT final table, but he has once again raised the bar for anyone wishing to challenge his EPT cash record – it now stands at 18.

Giacomo Maisto lurched into the top spot on the chip leaderboard when he made a runner-runner flush against Denis Murphy. Maisto doubled his stack then, and then added more chips to his stack with another flush against Domantas Klimciauskas. Maisto bagged over 1.5 million in chips at the end of Day 3. His closest competitor is Iulian Ruxandescu, who occupies the second spot on the chip leaderboard with 1,281,000 in chips.

Other players who bagged big stacks include Cristian Dragomir with 895,000, APPT Macau High Roller champion Vladimir Geshkenbein with 889,000 and a heavy Flemish contingent made up of Kevin Vandersmissen (803,000), Koen de Visscher (768,000) and Philip Meulyzer (762,000). A little lower in chip counts, but also still in the running, is Martins Adeniya (402,000), Friend of PokerStars Pierre Neuville (335,000) and Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko (379,000).

The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be back at the Alpine Palace on Thursday from 2:00 p.m. CET (1:00 p.m. GMT) to bring you all the action as the remaining 24 players play down to a final table.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

March 23 2011, Chad Holloway

For months, poker forums have been filled with rumors and stories about a player known as the “Portuguese Poker Prodigy.” Little was known about him other than that he had been coached by Daniel “jungleman12” Cates, and that he had amassed a small fortune by playing online poker, all before the age of 18. Given the illegal nature of his play (he was not of legal age to play on online sites), the identity of the Portuguese Prodigy was a closely guarded secret.

That all changed recently when José “Girah” Macedo came forward and revealed the details about his rise to poker prominence as the Portuguese Poker Prodigy. Macedo was born in 1992. His father died four years later and Macedo was raised by his mother. As a youth, he was an avid footballer and tennis player, and he loved competition in general. It wasn’t until his mid-teens that he discovered poker, as he explained in his blog and in a TwoPlusTwo thread.

“My fascination with poker really started when I was 16. I decided that I wanted to buy a house in Hawaii for me and my family/friends which I had already picked out. Sounds silly for a high schooler, I know, but I was that kind of kid. A friend of mine had been playing poker for play money and told me a story about this guy named Durrrr. How he had started with nothing, just a poor college kid, and using his wits and hard work, created for himself a fortune by mastering this game. I was captivated. I got every poker book I could find at the local bookstore (I couldn’t afford to buy any and poker was still a secret, so I’d sneak the books into the bathroom to read them) and spent two months reading and analyzing them – Mathematics of Poker, [David] Sklanky’s Theory of Poker, Harrington on Hold’em, Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed, and more. I was also watching every poker show I could, and studying all of their plays, all the way down to the smallest little bet or fold. As I was studying the game, I would test my theories and discoveries on the play money tables, where over time I accumulated a million play chips.”

After begging his mother for a €30 deposit on Betfair, in which he failed to tell her it was for poker, Macedo began to grind the micro-stakes for up to ten hours a day. Before long, he was playing 24 tables at a time and had turned his initial deposit into $2,500. At that point, he came clean to his mother, who was more nervous than supportive. Once he doubled that and continued to climb, Macedo eventually caught the attention of some other players who told him about various poker tools such as Hold’em Manager and poker forums, both of which he used to take his game to the next level.

“I spent countless hours reading through all of the great posts in the history of TwoPlusTwo, from the likes of durrrr, DogIsHead, Krantz, Sauce, Jungleman, Lefort, MagicNinja, FoxwoodsFiend, etc. I would analyze their posts and try my hardest to grasp why they were saying what they were saying. Of course, a lot of the time I couldn’t, so I did what any normal person would do: I tracked them down on Skype and would ask them for one hour of coaching for them to talk to me about their ideas about whatever hand they had talked about that I didn’t understand.”

Macedo’s unconventional tactics worked, and he eventually worked closely with the likes of Cates, “DogIsHead,” and “Sauce,” incorporating their advice into his game and continued to rise in limits. After hitting some trouble at the $5/$10 no-limit hold’em level, Macedo recommitted himself, found some coaches, and eventually conquered the game. From there, things continued to run his way as evidenced by a chart he posted on TwoPlusTwo.

Obviously, not everything has come up roses for Macedo. “It wasn’t easy and I faltered at times, but finally by the end of summer I was ready to take my first shot at the nosebleeds,” he said. “It didn’t go quite as planned the first time around. I got to revel in my first +$100k day, and I got to wallow in my first -$200k loss. There were lots of ups and downs, but I felt grateful for it every day.” Macedo admitted that in October 2010, someone close to him took advantage of him to the tune of $250,000, although the details on the situation aren’t exactly clear.

“I’m proud of how far I’ve come and all that I’ve managed to accomplish in this time, but I’m far from done,” he said. “I look up from my desk, and there’s a board suspended on the wall. I made it a year ago when I was 17, when reaching the top of the poker world was still just a silly fantasy. On this board there are four pictures cut out and pasted: a crisp green million dollar bill, a picture of a WSOP bracelet, a screenshot of Durrrr sitting at Rail Heaven, and a photo of a little house in Hawaii. And as I’m looking at this silly little board I made, my mind wanders to where I started my journey. I remember standing at the foot of this mountain, a 16-year-old boy, looking up with dreamlike wonder. Imagining what it would be like to scale its peak. I’m not at the foot of the mountain anymore, but my story has just begun. And although sometimes this mountain can seem dauntingly tall, I’m ready for it. And I’m grateful for this chance to climb it.”

Since coming forward, Macedo’s life has taken on some noticeable changes. In a blog post, dated March 13, Macedo explained that he has received numerous messages of support along with the occasional request from friends to double their money if they gave him $50. He went on to say: “The whole experience has just been really overwhelming, my family and friends can’t believe they can Google my name and read all about this alternate life I have, that they previously knew nothing about. A few shocked friends and family members have been calling asking how it’s possible that they were unaware of my success . . . It’s also weird being in school and everyone knowing about it, I kind of expect it from my friends, but when my English teacher asks me if I’m winning or losing, it’s just really strange and hard to know how to react.”

While Macedo, who claims to have purchased that house in Hawaii, has come forward to tell his story, many poker fans remain skeptical, especially in a thread on TwoPlusTwo dedicated to the Portuguese Prodigy. Some believe his story is too good to be true and that it is a pure fabrication, although more and more evidence seems to suggest otherwise. One thing is for sure, the poker world hasn’t heard the last of the “Portuguese Prodigy.”

The PokerNews Podcast team is trying to round up an interview with Macedo, so be on the lookout for that, and as always, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for up-to-the-minute news.