Posts Tagged ‘european poker tour’
No Armed Gangs Have Robbed EPT Vienna… Yet
October 26th, 2010
Daniel Negreanu sporting his military-style black sweater, just in case.
Action at the Vienna stop on the European Poker Tour got underway today and, so far, no armed gangs have pulled off any dramatic heists at the tournament. The event will host a number of high-profile tournaments, including a £5,000 Main Event, a $10,000 No Limit Hold’Em high-roller event and a £1,100 HORSE tournament. The first half of the field in the Main Event got their start today, with the remainder setting off tomorrow.
Despite the seeming calm today, tournament organizers aren’t taking any chances. In the last year, two large poker events in Europe have been the target of attacks by large groups of armed men. The first was another EPT stop, in Berlin, which was attacked early last March. Just a few weeks later, as many as 10 armed men stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from a casino near Basel, Switzerland.
Security at the Kursalon Hubner Palace is tight, and security levels in the city are high, like they’d be on an official state visit. Vienna’s special police WEGA unit is said to be at the ready, and police and security guards are on hand to escort tournament winners to the nearest bank. Some reports suggest that various Viennese law enforcement officials tried to persuade the government to cancel the tournament due to security concerns. Assuming the actual poker action continues to take center stage, celebs like Boris Becker will be battling some big name pros, including Daniel Negreanu.
Nacho Barbero Wins EPT London High Roller Event
October 4th, 2010
Two-time LAPT champ Nacho Barbero has officially conquered Europe.
It’s been quite the year for Jose Ignacio Barbero. First the Argentine, better known in the poker community as “Nacho,” won the Latin American Poker Tour stop at Punta del Este, Uruguay. Then he became the first two-time LAPT champion by winning the tour’s next tournament in Lima, Peru. And now he’s added European Poker Tour hardware to his trophy case with a win in the EPT London High Roller event.
The tournament, which sported a hefty £20,000 buy-in, drew 77 entries and one of the toughest fields you’ll ever see in a live poker tournament. The final table of eight players, reconvened at London’s Hilton Metropole today for a third and final day of play, led by Vanessa Selbst and her 33 percent of the total chips in play. She was looking good to run for the title by the time Pierre Neuville, Will Molson, Matt Marafioti were gone, and she picked up even more chips when she knocked out English Poker Open winner Fabian Quoss in fifth place with A-2 to Quoss’ J-J.
At that point Barbero went on a tear. First he pulled off a huge suckout with A-8 against Andrew Robl’s A-J, crippling Robl in the process. Then Barbero and Selbst got into a raising war before the flop – five bets put her all-in and her pocket tens were marginally ahead of Barbero’s A-J. The flop even brought Selbst another ten for three of a kind, but the turn and river were running cards to give the Argentine a Broadway straight and send Selbst out in fourth place (£145,000). Finally Robl shoved for 11 big blinds with K-5 and Barbero made the call with A-3, which held to send Robl to the rail in third place (£198,000).
The last man standing between Nacho Barbero and European poker glory was Finland’s Jani Sointula, and he didn’t go away easily. For three straight hours the pair played heads-up poker, with Barbero starting with the lead and Sointula taking it away. But once Barbero pulled ahead again he wouldn’t be denied – he dodged the short-stacked Sointula’s all-in bets until he caught A-J in the hole and made the call. He was solidly ahead of the Finn’s K-4, and an ace on the flop was all it took to ship him the £556,000 (US $881,149) top prize. Sointula, meanwhile, settled for the consolation of £335,000.
With his EPT London High Roller victory, Barbero’s total tournament winnings in 2010 now total nearly $1.54 million – not bad for a guy who had won about $305,000 in the previous five years combined.
Annette Obrestad Wins at EPT London Heads-Up
September 30th, 2010
Annette Obrestad modelling her lucky sunglasses. (photo courtesy of Bluff Magazine)
It may not have turned out to be the year of the women at the World Series of Poker, but that doesn’t mean that Annette Obrestad isn’t carving out a pretty good year for herself. And maybe her finest performance of the year just wrapped up, as she won the £5,250 European Poker Tour London Heads-up event in dominating fashion.
Each match in the tournament was a best-of-three, with the final being a best-of-five. Of the sixteen heads-up games she played in the heads-up event, she lost only two on her way to the title.
Along the way, she posted brief updates to her Twitter account. When the final cards were dealt, she sent out a simple message of victory: “Weeeeeee won”.
Obrestad takes home £120,000 for the win, the first for her in a EPT side-event. It brings her up to over $3.3 million in live tournament winnings, in addition to her hefty online poker cashes.
EPT London Poker Festival Begins Today
September 28th, 2010
Aaron Gustavson begins his EPT London title defense tomorrow.
While WSOP Europe goes about its business wrapping up the final day of its Main Event in London, the European Poker Tour is just settling in for another action-packed week of poker.
EPT London got started at the London Metropole today with four different events. The biggest among them is the £5,000 + £250 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em event, which has a 64-player cap and is being played out in a best-of-three format for each round of the tournament. Among those who played the first round were Shannon Shorr, who busted in two straight losses, and Annette Obrestad and Barry Greenstein, who both won their first-round matches 2-0.
The other big event on the schedule today is the £2,000 + £150 European 8 Game Championships, featuring a mix of Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw, limit hold’em, limit Omaha hi-lo, Razz, seven-card stud, seven-card stud hi-lo, no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. There should be a small but tough field for that event, as will also be the case with this Saturday’s £20,000 + £500 High Roller event. And for those who don’t want to play hold’em or to put up the cash for the bigger events, there are more than 20 other events scheduled for the next week at this biggest of the regular-season EPT festivals.
Both of these preliminary events will wrap up their final day of play tomorrow, which coincides nicely with Day 1A of the £5,000 + £250 EPT London main event. Last year’s tournament drew 730 players, the largest live poker tournament field in British history. American Aaron Gustavson won a remarkable heads-up match against then-defending (and now retired) world champion Peter Eastgate, grabbing £850,000 (US $1,353,158) for his efforts.
British Poker Players Dominate EPT Vilamoura Day 4
September 1st, 2010
British online poker star Toby Lewis leads EPT Vilamoura. (Photo: The Hendon Mob)
Four days are down in Vilamoura, Portugal, site of the latest European Poker Tour main event, and the top three chip stacks heading into the final table all belong to British poker players.
Chip leader Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis (3,322,000) is a successful online poker player who’s a relative newcomer to live poker tournaments. Already the eighth-ranked online player in the UK according to PocketFives, Lewis’ first live cash came with a win in a £200 buy-in tournament in Brighton back in the spring of 2009. Since then he has piled up another $171,669 in live tournament earnings, including two EPT cashes. He has already secured the biggest live tournament cash of his career regardless of his finish tomorrow.
Second-place man Sam Trickett (3,365,000 in chips) has been cashing in poker tournaments for only about the last three years, but he’s made the most of that short time by winning nearly $1.33 million, impressing nearly every time he sits at the table. His fourth-place finish in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event was worth $245,927. At this year’s Series the biggest of the former professional soccer player’s six cashes ($505,725) came from a second-place performance in the same event, and he had a chance at an even bigger score before becoming the final table bubble boy in the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event and settling for a $141,168 payday instead. A win tomorrow would mark the seventh tournament victory of his short career.
And in third place is Teddy Sheringham (1,783,000). With 415 English Premier League games and 51 international appearances for the English national soccer team under his belt, Sheringham picked up live poker tournaments as a hobby. He nearly had a big breakthrough at last year’s WSOP Europe Main Event, finishing in 14th place of 334 players to grab a $66,738 prize. If he finishes in seventh place or higher in this tournament he’ll have grabbed his biggest career cash.
Of course, there are still five other players left, including short-stacked former EPT Grand Final champ Rob Hollink. But at the 12,000/24,000/2,000 level they’ll all need some luck on their side since none of them have more than 50 big blinds. Along with the three British poker players dominating the leaderboard, they’ll be back in action at noon local time tomorrow to see who takes the €467,835 ($597,285) top prize.
EPT Vilamoura Begins Day 2 With 211 Players
August 30th, 2010
No time for rust to set in – the European Poker Tour is back in action.
Just two weeks after its first-ever stop in Estonia, the European Poker Tour got back to the felt this weekend in Portugal. EPT Vilamoura kicked off with two Day 1 flights on Saturday and Sunday. The two starting days combined for a total of 384 entrants, a new record for a live poker tournament in Portugal, and built a total prize pool of €1,862,400. Just 56 of those players will make the money, with a a top prize of €467,835 awaiting the winner of the event.
Leading the field when 221 players return today to begin the task of eliminating Day 1 survivors will be online qualifier Leonid Bilokur of Russia, who bagged up 161,200 in chips at the end of Day 1B. He’s followed closely by Day 1A chip leader Andre Coimbra (157,600), with notable poker players like Sam Trickett (132,600), Sorel Mizzi (132,200), Dario Minieri (131,400), Antonio Esfandiari (127,800), Brandon Cantu (122,400), Antony Lellouche (114,100), EPT Grand Final winner Nicolas Chouity (108,800), David Williams (86,100) and Liv Boeree (79,300) lurking further down the chip counts.
At this early point nobody can be a real favorite, but one man to keep an eye on today is Arnaud Mattern. After bagging up 119,200 in chips on Day 1A, the French poker pro appears to be have shaken off the bad beat that sent him packing in third place at EPT Tallinn. If he can continue to play top-level poker he may be back in the running to become the first two-time EPT champ faster than anyone expected from him.
EPT Vilamoura resumes at Casino Vilamoura in Portugal at noon local time today.
Trial Begins for Berlin Poker Heist Ringleaders
August 20th, 2010
A still from live video captured during the EPT Berlin poker heist. (image courtesy of RTL)
The bold, action movie-esque armed robbery made headlines around the world, as a gang armed with assault rifles stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from a European Poker Tour event. And now, the trial has begun for the accused ringleaders of the attack.
The four men who actually carried out the robbery at the EPT event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin have already been tried and convicted. But the two men accused of masterminding the March 6th attack, Mohammed Abou-Charka and Ibrahim Al Moussa, began their trial yesterday, in Germany. The four convicted robbers are expected to testify today, while the trial will likely continue until November.
According to police sources, Abou-Charka allegedly met with the four robbers at a take-out food stand, to brief them about plans for the heist. The alleged ringleader, Al Moussa, was playing in the poker tournament, and watched the robbery from the hotel lobby. His lawyer denies the allegations, and says there’s no evidence linking him to the attack.
The gang got away with approximately 242,000 Euros in the attack, and only 4,000 Euros have been recovered. Nobody was killed during the heist, but a security guard suffered injuries. If convicted, Abou-Charka and Al Moussa each face up to 15 years in prison.
Bad Beat Busts Arnaud Mattern in EPT Tallinn
August 16th, 2010
Arnaud Mattern in happier times, before a two-outer ended his run in Estonia.
Earlier today Arnaud Mattern was looking to become the first player ever to repeat as a European Poker Tour champion. Now he’s bemoaning his bad luck after a brutal beat that sent him home from Tallinn, Estonia, in third place.
Things were certainly aligned properly to give Mattern a solid shot at becoming the first two-time EPT champion. He entered the final table with nearly 30 percent of the chip in play and extended his lead when he eliminated the final table’s first player, Bassam Elnajjar, with pocket aces against A-Q. He also busted Mikko Jaatinen, holding A-K to the Finn’s K-9, to take the action down to four-handed.
From there, though, the Mattern Express unable to pick up any more speed thanks to Kevin Stani and Konstantin Bilyauer, two players who won their seats through satellite events. The last three players at the table, they took turns exchanging pots – and the chip lead – until Stani jumped out to a significant lead thanks to a timely bluff against Mattern. Only minutes later Stani would make another aggressive play against the Frenchman, this one timed much more poorly than the first. He opened with 3-3 and then made it four bets all-in after Mattern had made it three bets. Mattern immediately called with pocket queens, making him a 4:1 favorite to double up into the chip lead. Instead another trey fell on the turn, giving Stani a set, and the blank river ended the hand.
Arnaud Mattern took home €160,000 for his third-place finish at EPT Tallinn. He will have to wait until the end of this month, when the tour goes to Vilamoura, Portugal, to make another run at becoming the first repeat European Poker Tour champion.
Arnaud Mattern Leads EPT Tallinn Final Table
August 15th, 2010
French poker pro Arnaud Mattern looks to make EPT history tomorrow.
Arnaud Mattern has one European Poker Tour title and more than $1.5 million in tournament earnings since 2005. Now he’s one step away from doing something nobody else has ever done – becoming a repeat EPT winner. Mattern won his first EPT title in Prague, Czech Republic, back in 2007, and this will actually be his second chance to become a repeat winner. He made the final table of the EPT Polish Open main event in Warsaw back in 2008 but finished in fifth place.
Now he holds the chip lead after four full days of play at the EPT’s first stop in Tallinn, the capital of the Baltic republic of Estonia. With just eight players remaining he holds more than 29 percent of the total chips in play, while Norwegian online qualifier Kevin Stani and Russian live satellite winner Konstantin Bilyauer, who sit second and third in chips, each have more than 20 percent of the chips in play.
There are still five other players at the table who will have something to say about the eventual outcome in Tallinn, too. But there’s no better position to be in heading into the final table than that of Arnaud Mattern. With €400,000 and the chance to become the first player ever to win two EPT main events on the line, a victory in Tallinn would be career-defining for the French poker pro. As for whether he’ll be able to achieve that feat, we’ll have to wait until the cards get back in the air tomorrow to find out.
Day 2 Action Underway at EPT Tallinn
August 13th, 2010
Finnish metal man Voitto Rintala made Day 2 but busted before the money.
The European Poker Tour has finished all the preliminary work in Tallinn, Estonia, and is down to the real business today with Day 2 action.
Perica Bukara of Serbia finished Day 1B with the biggest stack, bagging up 210,600 in chips to surpass Day 1A leader Ali Tekintamgac and claim the title of EPT Tallinn overall Day 1 chip leader. Fresh off a final table finish at the Unibet Open in Prague, Czech Republic, Bukara would be able to claim the biggest cash of his career if he were to make the final table, regardless of finishing position.
The rest of the 210-strong field got to work today at noon local time to begin playing down to the money, and necessity meant that dozens of them would have to bust out before the money. Among those who fell on Day 2 were EPT Barcelona final tablist and Romanian Poker Championship High Roller runner-up Mihai Manole, 2010 WSOP $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em champion Valdemar Kwaysser, 2009 WSOP $2,000 Limit Hold’em winner Marc Naalden and Finnish metal bassist Voitto Rintala.
The top 56 finishers will get paid at EPT Tallinn, with the last player at the table taking home a whopping €400,000 – not bad for the first major international live poker tournament held in Estonia.
