Michael McDonald Leads Final Table at EPT German Open

Online poker pro Michael McDonald is the chipleader at the final table of the EPT German Open. (Image Courtesy of RollingStone.com)

Ummm, we don't have a picture of anyone even remotely associated with the final table of the EPT German Open. However, the chipleader heading in is online poker pro Michael "timex" McDonald, so you're getting a picture of legendary soul singer Michael McDonald of Doobie Brothers fame. See what we did there? Clever, huh?

The other seven players - For some reason best known to themselves, the EPT has a final table of eight players, probably to differentiate themselves from the WPT (6) and the WSOP (9) - have names that range from easy to pronounce to one's we could probably take a wild stab at and still butcher horribly. So here are the full names and chip counts in text form so you don't have to hear us try:

1. Michael McDonald - 862,000
2. Johannes Strassmann - 827,000
3. Diego Perez - 744,000
4. Andreas Gí¼lí¼nay - 560,000
5. Torsten Haase - 369,000
6. Christian Harder - 339,000
7. Claudio Rinaldi - 276,000
8. Thibaut Durand - 148,000

Next to McDonald, Perez is the easiest on our tongues, so we're rooting for those two. But watch Gí¼lí¼nay pull it out just to spite us. We're not even sure what to do with those dots above the letters (someone just told us they're "umlauts," whatever).

Live updates and chip counts will be available over at PokerNews.com when final table play starts tomorrow.