Yorky Pud

Some of the world's best poker players descended on the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada this week for the $25,500 World Poker Tour finale, the World Championship. A total of 220 players parted company with the huge entry fee in exchange for 100,000 tournament chips and after four gruelling days of high octane poker, only 15 of them remain.

Yesterday 52 of these players returned to the poker room at the Bellagio knowing that 25 of them would walk away with no money to show for their efforts over the past four days. Some of the casualties to go home empty handed included former WPT World Championship winner Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, Sam Trickett and Roberto Romanello.

Another player who went home with no prize money was Ali Tekintamgac, the man who allegedly cheated at various live tournaments in Europe and the man who bore the brunt of Negreanu's tirade on Twitter during Day 2 of play. Three hours into Day 4 he found himself all in with AhTc against the KdQd of Doyle Brunson on a flop reading Ad-Td-4h. The turn was the 8c which kept our controversial player in front but the 7d on the river completed Brunson's flush and left Tekintamgac with just a solitary 5,000 chip, or one small blind as it was worth at the time. This went in the very next hand with 9c8c and was up against the AdTd of Kwinsee Tran and when the final board ran out Kd-7d-5c-8h-2d our alleged cheat was eliminated in 37th place, some may say justice was served.

The field was slowly but surely being reduced in size and just before 1700 local time, five hours after the tournament had restarted, the bubble was burst. Hafiz Khan found himself all in with a pair of aces and looked on course to double up through Justin Young who held pocket jacks but a third jack on the turn ruined those ideas and sent Khan to the rail in 28th place, guaranteeing at least $37,167 for those players who still had chips in front of them. Again there was a steady stream of eliminations, with two notable ones in particular, Brunson in 24th place and Dave “DevilFish” Ulliot in 22nd, the latter getting his money in good with AxQx against the AxJx of Tony Gargano but Gargano spiked a jack to send the East Yorkshireman home earlier than he would have liked.

Leading the way when play resumes at 1200 local time (1800 UK time) is Galen Hall, who has managed to turn his 100,000 starting stack into a much more impressive 3,438,000. Hall is on a real heater at the moment having won the 2011 PCA for $2,300,000 in January and has followed that up with a number of impressive results that have seen him earn more than $2,450,000 in 2011 alone. However, if he wants to take home the $1,618,344 prize on offer for winning this event he is going to have to defeat some very talented players who have made it to the last 15. Although David Williams is very short stacked, one double up will see him right back in contention and when you see the field still has the likes of Shannon Shorr and Scott Seiver in there, it will not be an easy ride for Mr Hall that is for certain.

So you have been fortunate enough to win a seat at the upcoming World Series of Poker for next to nothing through one of Betfair Poker's many 2011 WSOP Qualifiers and are looking forward to jetting out to Las Vegas, Nevada to rub shoulders with some of the biggest names in the business and hopefully win a life-changing sum of money.

For many of the players who have won a WSOP seat through a satellite flying abroad to play poker will be the very first time they have done just that so it is important to follow a few simple hints and tips to make the journey to “Sin City” a more enjoyable, comfortable and profitable one.

If you are flying from the United Kingdom then expect the flight to take between 10 and 12 hours, which seems like the perfect opportunity to sink a few beers and shots to get into the Las Vegas spirit, right? Wrong! Although you can and should celebrate being able to play on poker's biggest stage there is a time and a place for it and the plane to Vegas is not one such time. Drinking alcohol on the flight will massively increase the chances of you being dehydrated and it will not help your chances of beating the dreaded jet-lag. Try to stick to as normal routine as you can so if you have a night flight try and sleep and if it during the day have a walk around the plane, read a book chat to fellow passengers, just lay off the alcoholic drinks and try not to consume too many caffeine related products either for similar reasons.

Once you arrive in Las Vegas the temptation to go out an party will be greater than you have ever felt but you should try to be as disciplined as possible and have designated nights out and also “dry nights” where you do not drink or party and try to get an early night instead. These nights should be a couple of days before you are due to play and obviously at the end of days of play if you have survived through the day with chips intact. Working on the European Poker Tour has allowed me to see numerous players who have had piles of chips at the end of one day and they have then finished around midnight, gone out on the town only to have to return to the casino for another 12-14 hour day looking like death warmed up and either busting or playing terribly. Do not be one of the people the bloggers are talking about for all the wrong reasons!

On your tournament's starting day you should try to dress for the occasion and by this I mean do not turn up in shorts and a T-shirt otherwise you will be in for a shock. Whilst the outside temperature in Las Vegas may be enough to scorch the Earth, the air conditioning at The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino is notoriously effective, to the point where it is actually quite cold at times throughout the playing area. Have you ever noticed on television footage of the WSOP that there are dozens of players with hoodies sporting “I Love Las Vegas” or with “WSOP” logos on the front? The majority of these players will have turned up in summer clothes only to be constantly blasted with cold air and been almost forced to go an buy a hoodie from the souvenir shop.

Finally, although there are facilities for eating at the Rio you should take a selection of foods in with you for during the day because if you are feeling hungry then you will already be under-performing. Instead you should have some regular snacks of fruit, dried fruit and nuts to keep your energy levels and alertness at their peak throughout the day. This will also make it less likely you will want a large meal at the dinner break, as a large, heavy, stodgy meal could leave you feeling lethargic and unable to concentrate fully.

I've not really played much poker over the past few days because I am still testing the waters on the matched betting front. So far it is going pretty well but Jesus Christ it is boring and I am actually thinking of stopping doing it, yes that is right, I am turning down what is essentially free money!

For those of you who don't know what matched betting is here is a basic overview. All you basically do is open a sports betting account with a bookie and they offer you a bonus for doing so in the form of a free bet. To get your hands on this free bet you must place a qualifying bet first, so you do that but lay the same result off on the Betfair betting exchange, which means you break even on your qualifying bet all but a quid or so. You then do the same with your free bet and withdraw any money in the bookie or chuckle to yourself when you lose at the bookie and all the money is in your Betfair account.

So far I have done 12 bookies and have made £187.43 in cold hard cash and a further £67.49 from Quidco, a site you can buy almost anything through and they pay you their commission. So from the 12 saps that have given me free bets I have made a total of £254.92, not bad for nothing. Although it is free money it does have a few downsides, mainly the fact it ties up a large chunk of your available money until you receive your money back, it is ultra boring as you do not care about the result of the sporting event and you have to put money onto sites you have never heard of! I'm probably going to do one more as there is one bookie, that shall remain nameless right now, that is offering £200 of which I should be able to come away with around £180.

Although most of my poker bankroll has been tied up with it being required to lay bets off on Betfair, I have actually played a few cash game hands and a few HUSNG. I won two and lost one $11 HUSNG and I've been running pretty good at cash games when I have actually played them. Since the last entry I have played a massive 239 hands and won $151.63, a large percentage of which came from a hand at a NL100 table that I sat down at by accident after a few sherberts! In the hand I raised to $4 from UTG+1 and a player next to act three-bet to $12. Action folds around to me and I'm not a fan of re-popping QsQd here and folding is way too weak so I call and hope to flop a set. Flop comes down Jh-Qh-9h, which isn't perfect but could be worse I suppose. I check and amazingly he checks behind. The turn brings the 9h into play and I lead out with a $19.50 bet into the $27 pot and villain flat calls. Hmmm. River is the 5s and with $66 in the pot and $64 in my stack I shove and he snap-calls before mucking and the hand history isn't showing what he mucked but I assume AhKh at the very least. Ship the $191 pot!

In other news I have finished reading and re-reading “The Mental Game of Poker” by Jared Tendler and Barry Carter and will be writing my review of it in the very near future. I actually wrote it last week but being the life-fish that I am I somehow deleted it and couldn't recover it. Needless to say I will be using the book in my next few entries and using it to explain my decision to stop pissing about in games I have no real interest in and start playing some bigger, more expensive tournaments both online and live.

Until next time, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Back in May 2010 Ali Tekintamgac beat Roberto Garcia Santiago heads-up to become the World Poker Tour Spanish Championship winner and with it he won €278,000. Part of that prize money, $25,500 to be exact, was in the form of a seat to the WPT's finale, the WPT World Championship at the Bellagio, but the poker community is in uproar after Tekintamgac was allowed to take his seat despite allegations of cheating.

After his win at the Spanish Championship, Tekintamgac finished fifth in the €2,000 IPT Venice Main Event before heading to Estonia for EPT Tallin. Here, whilst in the money, Tournament Director Thomas Kremser asked Tekintamgac to leave the tournament after suspicion arose about him using fake bloggers and photographers to relay information back to him. Less than a month later he made it to the final table of the Partouche Poker Tour but just hours before it was due to begin he was disqualified, again for alleged cheating.

The case against Tekintamgac has never been completely proven in a court of law but the facts remain that there is video evidence suggesting he was receiving signals from people close to the action, photographic evidence of the same people standing at the opposite end of the table from Tekintamgac in several events and that the bloggers, who said they were following Tekintamgac due to his popularity on their site, named a site that did not even exist and never has done! Also, after his disqualification at Partouche, he was spotted playing in a Dutch tournament with the same bloggers and a player linked to Tekintamgac, a Kadir Karabulut, was later ejected from the tournament for alleged cheating offenses.

Unbelievably, the WPT have allowed Tekintamgac to take his seat at the $25,500 WPT World Championship where he has quite ironically made it through to Day 3 with a healthy stack of 205,800 and is in the top half of the chip counts. During yesterday's play Daniel Negreanu spotted the alleged cheater and immediately tweeted, “Ali Tekimtamgac who was caught cheating in Partouche is in #WPTChamp I called him out, and floor told ME I can't do that! When will we learn.”

An incensed Negreanu followed that up immediately with, “Bellagio/WPT should absolutely not allow this person in the event. He was caught red handed cheating and should be banned. This is absurd.” A short while later Negreanu took a photograph with his iPad2 of the player in question and accompanied it with the text, “This is a picture of the cheater. Its mind boggling that HE is being protected. Makes no sense.”

Negreanu also alleges that Tekintamgac threatened American pro Scott Siever when the latter was needling him about his alleged cheater exploits though these reports are still to be confirmed by sources other than Negreanu. If Siever was threatened in any way then it seems it did him some good as he finished the day on 461,300 chips, enough for fifth place out of the 116 surviving players.

When play resumes later today Tekintamgac will almost certainly be hounded constantly thanks to being on the same table as Phil Hellmuth  but also because a large rail will almost certainly be watching his other table mates, including Cliff “Johnny_Bax” Josephy, Farzad Bonyadi, Randy Dorfman, Jon “Pearljammer” Turner and Mike Sexton.

Stay tuned for all the news and developments from the Bellagio.

Season 7 of the European Poker Tour came to a thrilling climax at the felt with Ivan Freitez winning the Main Event and Jason Mercier taking down the High Roller tournament but it was in the world famous Pacha nightclub that the majority of players and press were interested in as the EPT Award Ceremony took place.

For the majority of Season 7 it has been a forlorn conclusion that Fernando Brito was going to win the Player of the Year Award as the Brazilian businessman seemed to make it to the money, or win, a tournament on every stop of the EPT. Brito, 52-year old, is now a permanent fixture on the European Poker Tour and in Season 7 alone he cashed a total of 16 times, including a sixth place finish at EPT London and he even managed to win six side events! An amazing set of performances from Brito.

Upon accepting his award Brito said, “We can only sing victory when it's achieved, so I didn't believe I had won until yesterday when I cashed in the Grand Final Main Event. I am very thankful to my family and friends – I couldn't have done this without them.” The Portuguese-born Brito has now won close to $820,000 is is second in the all-time money listing for Portugal behind Joao Barbosa.

The Online Qualifier of the Year award was never going anywhere else except Martin Jacobson, the talented player cashing in five Main Events, including three final tables and two runner-up finishes in EPT Deauville and EPT Vilamoura. Jacobson's consistency saw him finish second to Brito in the player of the year section.

The Omaha Player of the Year gong went to Dario Alioto who made the final table of three PLO events this year, had five cashes in total and an outright win. The Italian was pushed all the way by John O'Shea, who picked up the award for Best Country later in the night as Ireland's 70 entrants managed to make it to the money 16 times, the highest percentage of any competing nation on the EPT.

Apart from the Player of the Year award, the two most prestigious titles players on the circuit can receive are the EPT Achievement and the Players' Choice. Both of these awards went to Germany's Max Heinzelmann after he endeared himself to the eligible voters by finishing second in back-to-back events in Berlin and San Remo, results that netted him €1,100,000. Upon accepting his awards Heinzelmann simply put, “This means a lot to me. I'm very happy.”

Full List of Award

Player of the Year: Fernando Brito
Omaha Player of the Year: Dario Alioto
Mixed Game Player of the Year: Matthew Ashton
Heads-up Player of the Year: Diogo Veiga
Country of the EPT: Ireland
Online qualifier of the year: Martin Jacobson
EPT Achievement of the Year: Max Heinzelmann
Players' Choice: Max Heinzelmann

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

The 2011 World Series of Poker does not even start for another couple of weeks but already Harrah's Entertainment, the owners of the WSOP brand, have started their marketing campaign for the fifth annual World Series of Poker Europe.

You may recall that earlier in the year we brought you the news that the 2011 edition of the WSOPE was leaving London for the first time in its brief history to its new home in Cannes, France. One of the reasons Harrah's chose Cannes as the WSOPE's new location was the fact the Hôtel Majestic Barrière / Le Croisette Casino Barrière is much larger than The Casino at the Empire and can therefore accommodate more players and more tournaments.

And they have certainly been true to that latter part as this year's WSOPE is going to see a total of eight tournaments played, with seven of them awarding bracelets to the eventual winners. Kicking off proceedings on Friday 7 October is the €2,680 Six Handed No Limit Hold'em event with the €1,090 No Limit Hold'em, a five-day event, starting the very next day. Monday 10 October sees the €5,300 Pot Limit Omaha Event begin, then on Tuesday 11 October is the starting day for the €3,200 No Limit Hold'em Shootout.

A brand new event, the €10,400 No Limit Hold'em Split format starts on Wednesday 12 October and the organisers say this tournament will prove who is the best No Limit Hold'em player in the world. Day 1 will see players at nine-handed tables, Day 2 changes to six-handed then any subsequent days will be played heads-up. Personally I am not too sure what this event is trying to achieve but it could make interesting television.

Another new event starts on Thursday 13 October and should be an extremely well attended tournament. The €1,620 six-handed Pot Limit Omaha event could see records broken for PLO tournaments because the relatively low entry fee coupled with the fact that the majority of PLO online is played short-handed should make it very appealing indeed.

The crowning jewel of the series, the €10,400 No Limit Hold'em Main Event Championship is the tournament everyone is looking forward to. The four years it was played in London saw an average of 351 players take part but Harrah's believe they can accommodate and attract 700 players to this years. Whilst this may seem slightly optimistic, the €10,000 EPT Grand Final attracted 686 players so it is within the realms of possibility for sure.

The closing event is a €550 Ladies Event that will not award a bracelet to the winner.

All too often the news related articles on these very pages are full of stories of big name players, or well known online poker stars winning vast sums of money in tournaments around the world. In more recent times there have been plenty of British players making large scores but one in particular is pretty sweet as he is known Betfair Poker player!

Kevin Thurston, a 27-year old from Norwich works as a call centre manager for a marketing firm by day but by night, like many of us, he plays online poker and dreams of making a ton of money from this crazy game. He is known as bigkevzaces on Betfair Poker where he can be found playing multitable tournaments, but recently he had some success in the live arena, finishing as runner up at the GSOP Live Seville Main Event.

There were 190 entrants for the €3,000 Main Event, which created a prize pool of €402,010 to be shared out amongst the top 27 finishers and our hero almost went all the way before falling just short to scoop a wallet-bursting €58,400. He was kind enough to answer a few questions we put to him when he arrived home from sunny Spain.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. How long have you been playing poker and how did you first get into the game?
I've played poker for around seven years now after discovering it on television. I grew up living in a pub so I've always had a decent understanding on different card games.

When you play poker do you prefer cash games or tournaments?
I only ever play tournaments as I believe them to be better value. I find cash games extremely boring, soul destroying in fact.

How did the tournament (GSOP Live Seviile) progress for you? What was the standard of play like? One of the reasons the online equivilent of the GSOP is so popular is skill levels of the participants is pretty low.
On Day 1 I was incredibly hungover and I was contemplating skipping the first few levels because I really needed some sleep! Throughout Day 1 I was never in danger, never in a position where I had my tournament life on the line. At the end of Day 1 I was amongst the top 10 chip stacks and stayed there for a sustained period. All in all I can't complain with how things went!

The standard of play was quite mixed but you could easily tell who the solid and weak players were quite quickly.

You started the final table third in chips, did you feel like this was your chance to win a major live event and take home a big money prize?
I could tell that some of the other players on the final table were worried about laddering for the money and had never seen that amount of money before. I knew that I could use that to my advantage and did on a number of occasions as I wasn't overly concerned about the monies!

Did you have a gameplan going into the final table? Did you have to deviate from this plan?
I never had a specific game plan so couldn't deviate, instead I decided to take each hand as it came. I knew how tight it was going to be so I always had that in mind when opening pots up.

You doubled up early on with aces to eliminate Joni Joujkiumainen. At this point did you really start to think you could win GSOP Live Seville?
It was a significant confidence booster, but I already knew I had the ability to beat anyone. I'm not intimidated by any chip stack or a player's reputation. I knew it was always going to be an uphill struggle but I always knew I was capable.

You reportedly bought four bottles of champagne for the rail and table. Is this true and was there any particular reason for it?
Some people had been standing on the rail for the best part of three hours and some other Betfair Poker players who were staying at the same hotel as me went out of their way to support me so I felt it was the least I could do to enhance their experience of the final table.

According to the GSOP Live blog you were playing a rather unorthodox style that saw you frequently open-shoving from the small blind. Were there any strategical reasons for this?
I am an unorthodox player and I didn't want to let my opponents have a read on me. It was all relative to the chipstacks. If the roles were reveresed then I would have played the exact same way he did...tight.

Going into heads-up you trailed Anders Henriksson by 3,069,000 to 754,000 chips. I used to play HUSNG so I know this is a huge disadvantage. That said the effective chip stacks were still pretty substantial with plenty of play left. Did you have a game plan for the heads-up section?
I planned on doubling up early doors and then play a more structured game. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out this way.

The last hand saw you make your trademark over-bet shove of 60 big blinds with As3s and you were called by the pocket sixes of Henriksson, which held to ship him the title. Was the shove designed to mix your play up or were there other reasons behind it?
As aforementioned I like to keep myself unpredictable. Also, I didn't want to bleed chips off by limping into pots.

Any plans for the €58,400 you won for your impressive runner-up finish? What are your poker plans for the next few months?
I'm going to Las Vegas for the WSOP, playing the Main Event and a few side events. A Betfair Poker sponsorship wouldn't go amiss so pull some strings, LOL!

The 686 players who parted company with €10,000 to take part in the last Main Event of Season 7 of the European Poker Tour have been whittled down so that only 104 players remain, which incidentally is the exact number of them who will leave Madrid with some prize money to show for their efforts.

There were 299 players who returned to the Casino Gran Madrid and it took 11 hours for them to be reduced to 104, with the money bubble taking an hour to burst. When it did indeed pop, it was Damien Rony who became the 105th place finisher and therefore the last player to leave the EPT Grand Final Main Event empty handed. His exit hand saw Ivan Freitez raise to 12,000 with blinds at 2,500/5,000/500a and Rony move all in for a total of 45,000 chips. Freitez made the call and showed JsJc, which was up against AsKh. The board ran out 7h-9s-4h-6d-7s and with that the bubble had burst and everyone who had chips in front of them was guaranteed no less than €15,000.

Sat at the top of the leaderboard is Norwegian Ole Kristian Nergard who will return to the felt with 726,000. Closely follwing Nergard is Kristoffer Thorsson, who will be armed with 701,500. Thorsson is better-known as Sumpas online and is one of the best online tournament players in the world, a player who specialises in high buy-in online events, though he does have some very impressive results in the live arena, including a win at the 2009 Amsterdam Masters that netted him €636,120.

Also in with a realistic chance of EPT glory is Melanie Weisner, the PCA High Roller Champion William Reynolds and the recent EPT Berlin winner, Ben Wilonofsky. The 104 remaining players will continue to battle it out at the felt until only 24 of them are left, split across three 8-handed tables. At this point the tournament will be paused once again and the players will retire for the night safe in the knowledge they have locked up €40,000.

There is still a long way to go in this event but that €1,500,000 on offer for winning EPT Grand Final is getting ever closer to those players still in this prestigious event.

The European Poker Tour is currently playing out Season 7's Grand Final Main Event in Madrid but over the weekend the first-ever High Roller event to be held there was completed and it was Bertrand Grospellier who walked away with the lion's share of the spoils, €525,000 in layman's terms.

Grospellier, who is known to everyone on the poker circuit as “ElkY,” bested an extremely strong field containing 57 of European poker's best players, all of whom had paid €25,000 to enter, creating a prizepool of €1,435,000. This money would be shared pout amongst the eight final table members, and they were decided on Saturday evening as the 36 surviving players from Day 1 were eventually whittled down.

Final table seating plan

Seat 1: Vanessa Rousso – 146,000 chips
Seat 2: Alex Repik – 141,000
Seat 3: Peter Jetten – 63,000
Seat 4: David “Doc_Sands” Sands – 207,000
Seat 5: Galen Hall – 798,000
Seat 6: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier – 165,000
Seat 7: Juha Helppi – 707,000
Seat 8: Benny Spindler – 710,000

Each of the players was guaranteed €45,000 as the final table gut under way but this was quickly increased to €57,500 as the short-stacked Jetten made his exit. He open-shoved for 60,000 with QdTs from the button and was called by Hall in the big blind who had been dealt AsKd and when the final board ran out 4h-Ac-Js-8s-Ah Jetten was eliminated.

Not long afterwards there was a massive pot that resulted in Hall, the man who started the day as chip leader, exiting in seventh place. He found himself all in and at risk of elimination after a preflop raising war against the aggressive Spinder but was in great shape to double up with his pocket aces a huge favourite over the German's queens. That was until Spindler flopped a set to send the 2011 PCA Main Event winner to the rail.

Spindler's good run continued and after Helppi had dispatched Russian businessman Repik in sixth place, Spindler took care of Rousso and Sands in quick succession to leave the tie three-handed. It was then ElkY's turn to pick up the ladies, just in time to call Helppi's all-in bet that the Finn had made with jack-ten and when the board ran out 2d-Kd-6s-As-8c eight the final table had reached the heads-up stages.

Many thought the one-one-one section of the tournament was going to be over in an instant as not only did Spindler lead by 2,000,000 chip to ElkY's 700,000 but both players are of the “any two will do” philosophy of poker playing but the encounter lasted close to two hours before the champion was crowned. After doubling up with jacks against king-ten on board reading Th-3d-7h-9c-X, ElkY kept his foot on the gas and at around 1745 Central European Time he had won all of the chips that were in play.

The final hand saw Spindler uncharacteristically limp on the button and ElkY check his option in the big blind. A flop of 2c-9c-4d saw ElkY lead out with a bet of 33,000, which was three-bet to 90,000 by Spindler and then four-bet to 223,000 by the Frenchman, a bet that was called by Spindler. The Jc saw ElkY continue his trademark aggression, this time with a bet of 277,000 and again Spindler elected to call. The 9s on the river was greeted with an all in shove from ElkY and around a minute later his German opponent made the call for his tournament life but his Kc9d (trip nines) were crushed by ElkY's full house (9h4h).

ElkY has now won more than $7,300,000 from live poker tournaments, helped in part by his 2008 PCA Main Event win for $2,000,000, which he followed up with a win in the WPT Festa al Lago for $1,411,015 a few months later and then capped off with a win in the 2009 PCA High Roller for another $433,500. If ElkY's talent was ever in doubt then this surely proves he is one of the best players of his generation and is definitely going to be one to watch at the upcoming World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Final table payouts

1st: Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier: €525,000
2nd: Benny Spindler: €316,000
3rd: Juha Helppi: €185,000
4th: David Sands: €135,000
5th: Vanessa Rousso: €100,000
6th: Alex Repik: €72,000
7th: Galen Hall: €57,500
8th: Peter Jetten: €45,000