Yorky Pud

Certain countries get a poor reputation when it comes to their poker prowess. Ask the vast majority of poker grinders who they would love to be seated with and almost all would say a table full of French, Italian and German players. However, some may now be asking for Venezuelan players if Ivan Freitez's performance in the EPT Grand Final Main Event is anything to go by.

Now do not get me wrong, Freitez paid the €10,600 to enter this event so can play how he wants, and he obviously has some skills as he has a number of previous cashes to his name, including an outright victory in a $1,000 Venetian Deep Stack tournament that netted him over $100,000 but how he ran at the final table proves how much luck is involved in winning poker tournaments.

After Andrew Li and Alexandre Gomes, were eliminated within the first 90 minutes, the latter failing in his quest to become only the third poekr player in history to win the live Triple Crown, the Poker Gods decided to shine down upon Mr Freitez and let him almost literally hoover up all the chips that were on the table, starting with those that belonged to Eugene Yanayt.

Freitez opened the betting and Yanayt three-bet shoved for around 2,0000,000 chips. The action folded back around to Freitez and he sat motionless for several minutes before eventually making the call with a pair of nines. Amazingly, they were a huge favourite over the pocket fives of his American cash game pro opponent and they stayed ahead on a rather nondescript board to send the American to the rail in sixth place.

There was a minor break in the Freitez demolition show as Torsten Brinkmann busted out Juan Maceiras in fifth place to end the latters hopes of becoming the first-ever Spanish EPT Champion but it was business as usual shortly after when Russian Andrey Danilyuk moved all in when first to act in the small blind. The fact his opponent had not played a hand for almost an hour or the fact the bet was for 2,000,000 chips seemed to bother Freitez and he called with just Ad9c, which was essentially flipping against the 3s3d of Danilyuk. The Venezuelan's gall paid off as he spiked an ace on the river of a board reading Jc-7h-Td-Kh-Ah to reduce the final table to just three players.

Three became two shortly after and again it was Freitez and again ace-nine that busted a player. Brinkmann opened the betting to 350,000, Tamas Lendvai three-bet all in to 2,200,000, which usually would be enough to fold everyone out., but not on this table. Freitez looked down at Ah9h and re-shoved himself! Brinkmann mucked his Js8s and Lenvai flipped over 9s9d and looked on course for a double up. However it never came as the board came down 3d-As-Th-Qd-Jd to take the tie to the heads up stage, with Freitez leading by an almost unassailable 16,115,000 to 4,505,000 chips over Brinkmann.

The one-on-one encounter only lasted 40 minutes and how else would it end but with Freitez running his luck. With blinds at 80,000/160,000, Freitez min-raised to 320,000 with Td9d and Brinkman moved all in for 3,000,000 whilst holding AhKc. Freitez then snap-called, yes with ten-high, and his run-good continued as he hit a nine on the 5h-2s-9s flop. The 6d on the turn was no help to Brinkmann and neither was the 8c on the river. And with that Freitez became the first Venezuelan EPT Champion and had won the mammoth €1,500,000.

Final table payouts

1st: Ivan Freitez: €1,500,000
2nd: Torsten Brinkmann: €900,000
3rd: Tamas Landvai: €550,000
4th: Andrey Danilyuk: €400,000
5th: Juan Maceiras: €315,000
6th: Eugene Yanayt: €250,000
7th: Alex Gomes: €185,000
8th: Andrew Li: €130,000