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.

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.