A look back at the European Poker Tour 6th season – Monte Carlo

The European Poker Tour 6th season came to an end after a culmination in the Grand Final in Monte Carlo last week. Looking back at the series, it’s obvious it was a season just as good as any previous one, even better here and there, despite a rocky start that saw the first stop moved from Moscow to Kyiv on account of chaotic Russian legislation. Declared a sport a few years back, poker was suddenly outlawed in Russia on the eve of the EPT’s Moscow event. The organizers moved the setup to Kyiv, where Russia’s Maxim Lykov bested 300 players to walk away with the €330k top prize. The Russian then proceeded to finish 13th in the Snowfest stop of the series and he finished in the money in three other side events as well. More importantly, at the end of it all, he pocketed the EPT Player of the Year title as well.

Lykov’s Player of the Year title wasn’t the only noteworthy achievement of season 6 though. Jan Skampa became the final table king after he followed his EPT Villamoura 4th place with a win in the EPT’s Prague stop, which landed him a €683,100 prize. Skampa wasn’t the only Czech to do well. Martin Kabrhel became the side event king of the season. While his best Main Event performance was only a 60th place finish, Kabrhel dominated the side event scene by winning three such events during the season. He won in Villamoura and Prague and he won the high roller event in Deauville to top it all off. That win alone netted him a quarter million Euros.
On account of Kabrhel’s and Skampa’s great runs, the Czech Republic became the EPT Country of the year.

The 6th season of the EPT stood out on many more accounts too though. It broke the records for the largest and the smallest ever EPT events too. The EPT’s recent San Remo stop proved to be a huge success, attracting no fewer than 1,200 players. Liv Boeree won the event, after she’d secured her seat through a €500 super satellite .
The EPT Kyiv’s high roller event was the smallest EPT event in history: only 3 players registered. The eventual winner, Shaun Deeb, disposed of his opponents after a few hours of play, to pocket the €60,000 top prize.

As far as WSOP Main Event Champions were concerned, Peter Eastgate took the laurels in that category without any sort of problems. The Dane finished runner-up in the London event, and proceeded to cash in the Copenhagen Main Event followed by a final table finish in Deauville. This guy is certainly not the type of WSOP champion that goes and hides under a rock after the deed.
When it comes to surreal EPT moments, who could forget the EPT Berlin robbery, which saw masked gunmen brazenly attack the tournament security personnel, then walk away with the prize-pool. The perpetrators have been apprehended since and most of the money they stole was recovered. Kevin MacPhee won the event and walked away with €1 million, without the need to pull a gun on anyone.

The biggest winner of the 6th season was Harrison Gimbel of the US, who took down a €2.2 million prize in the PCA. Nicholas Chouity, the winner of the Grand Final came in second with €1.7 million.

Season 7 kicks off in August, but players eager to secure a seat in one of the events needn’t wait that long to get going. PokerStars will feature plenty of online qualifying possibilities throughout the summer.

Reikenmeier vs De Wolfe controversy

If poker’s a sport, then I suppose sportsmanship should be just as big a part of it as it is in football, soccer, basketball and you name it. Certainly the rules cannot possibly cover each and every situation that arises in a basketball game, and there are definitely things one just doesn’t do regardless of whether it is within the rules or not. The same goes for poker. There are a set of rules governing the game, but peculiar situations can arise, when it’s up to the sportsmanship (or rather gamesmanship) of the participants to handle things appropriately.

How fine the line between the rule-book and such marginal situations is, has been excellently illustrated at the EPT’s recently concluded Barcelona Main Event, by a hand between Tobias Reikenmeier and British pro Roland De Wolfe.
Before we begin discussing the situation, let’s see the facts. On a board of 7c,9h,4h,10c,Ah, Roland De Wolfe fired out a 95,000 chip bet which was promptly called by Reikenmeier. Following the call, neither player wanted to table his hole cards. De Wolfe eventually said that he had a K high and flashed the K before pushing his hand towards the muck. Reikenmeier then triumphantly tabled his Qc, 6c (which has obviously missed a club flush), and began to celebrate his win. In the meantime though, De Wolfe had pulled his cards out of the muck with the help of the dealer and showed a K,8o for the better high-card. The two of them started arguing as the crowd grew larger around the table. Tournament director Thomas Kremser walked over and after a short briefing session with the dealer, he awarded the pot to Reikenmeier.

You can watch the incident here though be warned, it’s German commentary.

Obviously, after just reading about the incident, the decision seemed well justified and fair. Roland De Wolfe only showed one of his cards before he pushed his hand towards the muck, which means that he actually mucked his hand. He’s a pro who’s been through a hell of a lot more than you and I will ever be through poker-wise, so yes, he should know better. As a matter of fact, you can actually tell that he kind of feels the decision was the correct one as well and that he is somewhat angry with himself for not showing that hand down properly.
On the other hand, if you actually take a look at the video the link to which I posted above, you’ll begin to doubt the decision. I mean that hand was pulled away from the muck so fast (with the dealer doing his best to prevent De Wolfe from getting it there in the first-place) that the decision doesn’t look like a no brainer anymore. Sure, the cards did touch the muck, but with the dealer’s intervention, there was no doubt the two cards retrieved were indeed the two legit cards. Now that I’ve actually seen what happened I think the TD’s decision would’ve been a different one, had he seen it with his own eyes too.

What makes the situation even more controversial is the fact that the K De Wolfe had shown made it pretty clear which the winning hand was.
Under the circumstances, the honorable thing for Reikenmeier to do would’ve been to muck his hand on the spot and let the possessor of the better showdown hand take the pot.
To add further confusion to the situation, it also has to be noted that if Reikenmeier did ask De Wolfe to show both his cards, then the TD’s decision would have to be accepted as the correct one. Why? Simply, because if he had decided to muck his hand or to show down the best hand (had he had it) he would’ve lost every right to take a look at his opponent’s second hole card. If we look at things from this angle, it’s pretty clear that there was no real showdown and that De Wolfe had actually folded.

This brings us to the German’s behavior. Regardless of whom the pot was awarded to, his behavior at the table was absolutely unacceptable. Certainly, the fact that he called De Wolfe on that last bet had earned him the right to take a look at both his hole-cards, and the fact that De Wolfe only showed one card, coupled with his hand actually touching the muck, offered him the technical possibility to lay claim to the pot, but that doesn’t change the fact that what he did was just plain wrong. What sort of an image does such behavior convey about the game of poker? Greedy angle shooters stalking their victims and taking advantage of all sorts of shady technicalities to chip up? This may all be about cold hard cash but one has to ask him/herself, is it worth it? (on second thought, with the amount of money involved I’m not sure the answer would be “no” to that question).

The bottom line is, after watching the video and reading a few of the comments about the hand, I’m left even more uncertain about what the decision should’ve been. At any rate, regardless of the decision, the TD should’ve issued a warning to Tobias for angle shooting, as one thing is certain: what he did there was less than honorable.

German player Moritz Kranich robs French contingent of home EPT title

The EPT’s Deauville stop returned after a few years break and it proved that EPT officials had indeed made the right decision in its respect. While the field wasn’t particularly rich in accomplished professionals that did nothing to impair the spectacle offered. The 645 pro, semi pro and amateur players put on a show which basically guaranteed that there would be a Deauville stop for the EPT next season too.

The French were present in great numbers on their home turf, and the final table itself was extremely French-heavy. Tristan Clemencon in particular had been playing extremely well all through the event and with 8 players remaining he was in possession of a well deserved chip lead too. Add to that the fact that he was by far the most composed and focused player at the final table and you’ll see why most pundits pointed to him as the most likely to walk away with the €851,400 first prize.

Lady Luck however wasn’t particularly keen on confirming the ‘lock’, and thus, when all dust settled in the wake of the final table, it was Germany’s Moritz Kranich who picked up the EPT trophy and who took the €851,400 from under the noses of the surprised French.

The decisive hand, the one which sealed Tristan Clemencon’s fate, came during three handed play. Kranich limped from the small blind and then, as Clemencon raised he called that too. The flop fell 10,10, 8 and Kranich checked in order to trap Clemencon in a check raise as the action came back to him. Realizing that he was walking into a trap, Clemencon flat-called to see what the turn would bring about. After the turn fell a blank, Kranich pushed all-in making it look like it was a shameless bluff. Clemencon thought for a while, then he obviously came to the conclusion that Kranich was way too desperate to take down the pot to hold anything of substance. He made the call for most of his stack and watched in disbelief as the German tabled J,10 for the set. He mucked his cards without showing before the river, probably ashamed he had made such a call on nothing but A-high.

Apparently, before it all went wrong for the young French contender, the other players offered him a 3-way deal, which would’ve given him €650,000, a deal which he turned down.

The above detailed hand put Kranich into a huge chip lead for the heads-up stage. Arnaud Esquevin, the last remaining French player, put up a valiant effort as he fought back the best he could hindered by the diminutive size of his stack. The game see-sawed for a while, but Kranich proved unstoppable. The Frenchman evaded his punches for a while, but backed up into the ropes he was soon forced to stand and fight.

The final hand of the tournament saw Esquevin all-in on his A,3o. Kranich was quick to call him with his A,7o and it looked like there would be another major upset of a hand developing, as Esquevin had hit a 2 outer to stay alive against Kranich earlier in the tournament.

This time though, Lady Luck was done for the day, and playing tricks on the favorite was no longer in her agenda. The board bricked out, and Kranich’s A,7 held up to give him the pot, the win, the trophy, the title and the €851,400.
One player who was certainly glad Clemencon hadn’t accepted the proposed 3-way chop, Kranich stood up to the French contingent and though shaky at times, he turned the $650 he had paid out for an online qualifier at PokerStars (That’s how he won his Deauville seat) into more than $1 million. Congrats.

EPT Deauville Day 2 and Day 3

Day 2 of the EPT’s Deauville stop was an action packed poker bonanza from the get go. The 284 players who survived Day 1A and Day 1B of the event wasted no time and were at each other’s throats from the very first hands dealt. David ‘Devilfish’ Ulliot started the day in the chip lead, after he had a great run in the closing stages of Day 1B and gathered up a 120,000 stack. Second in stack size at the beginning of Day 2 was Jonathan Abdellatif who had 105,000 chips, followed in third by Alessio Isaia who also managed to crawl past the 100,000 mark. All the other players were far behind this trio, the best of the field had around 80,000 chips.

8 levels of play were originally scheduled for the day or play would’ve gone on until there were 32 players left. The size of the starting field made it doubtful that enough players would head to the rail by the end of the 8th level, but given the intensity of the action, only 47 were left by the day’s end so the organizers had indeed assessed the situation well.
The man with the goods at the end of the day proved to be Germany’s Moritz Kranich, who swung his stack well several times throughout the day, and thanks to skill as well as to Lady Luck’s personal intervention on his behalf, wielded a 517,000 large stack at the end of the day. Given that the person in second place on the provisional leader board, Michel Abecassis only held around 300,000, the German was considered a favorite for reaching the final table.

Many of the ‘name’ pros who started the competition made it to Day 2, but only a few of them would move on to Day 3. Isabelle Mercier, Freddy Deeb, Vanessa Rousso and Ludovic Lacay were not among the lucky ones.
David Ulliott managed to preserve his Day2 starting stack and he even added some to it to finish the day with 143,000 chips. Ivo Donev and Mika Pasasonen also moved on.

4 players returned to the tables of the Barriere Casino for Day 3 of the EPT’s Deauville Main Event. The structure of the event meant that plenty of the players were quite deep-stacked at the beginning of the day. This fact did little to discourage aggression though. Eager to cut as big a share of the generous prize-pool as possible, players threw themselves into the fray with ardor and heads started rolling left and right soon.

Michel Abecassis was a member of the French contingent working to keep the prize at home so to speak, and despite the fact that he had started Day3 on a respectable stack, he busted out about midway through.
Dave Uliott was also one of the players everyone watched, and despite the fact that he got off to a flying Day3 start, he too was sent to the rail after almost making the top 20.
The Day3 chip lead would end up in possession of 19 year old Frenchman, Tristan Clemencon, who played aggressively and cut through the opposition like a hot knife through butter.

The player who started the day with a more than comfortable chip lead, Germany’s Moritz Kranich managed to acquire further additions to his stack, and finished the day in second place behind the young Frenchman.
The other final table participants were: Jorn Walthaus, Jonathan Azoulay, Thomas Delattre, Bruno Launais, Arnaud Esquevin and Andrea Benelli.
With the French contingent present in such solid numbers at the final table, a large part of the prize-pool will certainly stay at home, whether or not the winner will be a home team player too, remains to be seen.

EPT Prague ends up as an all-Italian affair

The European Poker Tour’s Prague stop featured a largely anonymous final table, and – according to some experts – plenty of questionable play decisions.
Italian player Salvatore Bonavena started the final table play with a solid chip lead, which he then promptly squandered at the end of a few weird plays.
Over the course of 12 hours, which was as long as the final table lasted, Bonavena blew his lead twice and regained it both times.

The final table play – considered the most sophomoric ever by many – began at 1 PM CET, with the two Italians who would eventually battle it out heads-up in 1st and 5th on the provisional chip leader board. No time was wasted as the send hand of the day marked the first elimination, that of Raul Mestre who probably found the pressure too much and went all-in on his Ac, 7c against Fredrik Nyberg’s made hand: a pair of 9s. The mandatory Ace landed on the flop, however fate had another twist up its sleeve for this pot. On the turn and the river, Nyberg hit a flush and sent Mestre packing. Eliminated in 8th, Mestre still took down a very nice prize of €71,800.

As play went on, it was quite obvious that besides Nyberg, Nasr el Nasr and Andrew Chen, the rest of the participants were effectively lost in space.
As luck would have it though, it was one of the guys who actually knew what he was doing, Nasr El Nasr, who exited next.
His Kd,Jd almost filled up for a flush, but Chen’s 10,10 eventually got the better of him. His 7th place finish meant a prize of €99,500.

Andrew Chen was in his element as he kept building up the short-stack on which he started the final table, past the dinner-break. All sorts of dubious decisions on the part of his opponents made his task rather easy.

One of the biggest loose-cannons of the final table, Francesco Cirianni met his tournament end at the hands of Chen, when his Ah, 8h failed to measure up to the latter’s A,Q.
Chen cemented his status as the final table favorite when he busted Alexiou Konstantinos’ bluff and took down a huge pot to assume the chip lead. Konstantinos didn’t hang on much longer after that. He shoved on a pair of 3s against Bonavena’s K,Q, and the board gave the latter a K, thus spelling the end of another player who many commentators suspected of not being any more skilled than themselves.

“Don’t try to bluff a donk” the saying goes, because chances are he just won’t get it. Chan committed his only mistake of the day firing no fewer than 3 bullets into Salvatore Bonavena who blissfully called him down holding a bottom pair, and thus crippled the favorite.
It didn’t take Chen long to bust out after that, and sure enough, a few hands later he ran his K,Q into Bonavena’s A,6 to finish 3rd.

The heads-up play was a show of weird calls and decisions from both players as Bonavena quickly surrendered his 3-1 chip lead losing to hands like 10,2. The final hand was also an illustration of the skill (or lack thereof) of the two combatants. All the money was shoved in on a flop of 8h, 3h, 2h with Bonavena holding 8d, 7d for the top pair and Di Cicco holding A,4. The turn and the river bricked out giving Bonavena the title and the €774,000 prize.