A German player named Andreas Krause is the new owner of a book entitled "Ace on the River," penned by a certain Team PokerStars Pro named Barry Greenstein.

That, unfortunately for Greenstein, means that his European Poker Tour excursion to Baden is over. As is well documented, the "Robin Hood of Poker" gifts a copy of his book to the player who eliminates him from every tournament: he brings a copy along at the start of every day, sits it on the table beside him, then autographs it and hands it over when the death knell sounds.

Barry Greenstein: player, author, out

It happened a few moments ago and, after fulfilling a couple of media requirements, Greenstein left the casino. He'll no doubt be back, but it's over for now.

Other Team PokerStars Pros have fared differently so far today. Dario Minieri is hardly a grinder, but he's been disciplined so far this afternoon and is still sitting with roughly what he started the day with, around 11,000 - still a short stack, but enough to play with.

Andre Akkari has dropped to about 8,000; Katja Thater has 14,000 and Luca Pagano, sharing a table with Pascal Perrault and Mark Vos, has about 22,000. RaiNKhan is also among tough company: he sits to the unfortunate right of Ram Vaswani. But his 31,000 is currently outsizing Ram's 29,000. Sebastian Ruthenberg, a PokerStars player in Baden, has 29,000


Luca Pagano
(c) Neil Stoddart

The PokerStars qualifiers, though, are reliably prosperous. John Shipley, who has been moved to Minieri's table, has 43,000, just short of Thierry van den Berg's 45,000, who is also on that table.


John Shipley
(c) Neil Stoddart

Mika Paasonen, who made the final table in Barcelona and is a qualifier here, has 22,000; Mats Iremark, EPT Deauville champion, has more than 40,000.

Among the other big names: Patrik Antonius just rivered a full house when his tournament life was on the line. He'd moved in on the flop with two pair, was called by a flush draw that got there on the turn. But one of his four outs popped out on the river and he's back around 35,000.

Sander Lyllof, overnight chip leader, has been going in the wrong direction all day. He has less than 10,000 in front of him after doubling up Richard Ashby (pocket fours, versus king-queen). And, in fact, as I type that, Lyllof has just appeared in the press room. He doesn't look happy and is clearly out.

Meanwhile, Mads Anderson and Andreas Hoivold, both former EPT winners, have 42,000 and 33,000, respectively.

It's been a strange day so far. No one has emerged with a monster stack; those who once had one have lost it. It really is anyone's game.