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.