Home / Poker News October 2009 / EPT London Main Event – Aaron Gustavson wins
EPT London Main Event – Aaron Gustavson wins
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2009-10-09 05:03
The final day of the
EPT’s London Main Event saw a field of youngsters belly up to the final table at the London Hilton Metropole, with 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate highlighting the field and with American Aaron Gustavson holding quite a dominating chip lead over the other players.
The first casualty of the final table was Moroccan player Karim Bennani, who bled his chips away and then got bounced by Rui Milhomens. The action slowed to a crawl following the first elimination, nobody anxious to follow the Moroccan to the rail. After about two hours of back and forth,
PokerStars’ Raymond Wu hit the rail, followed shortly by Milhomens himself who couldn’t put Bennani’s chips to good use.
Peter Eastgate had the chip lead at that stage and he looked to be well on his way to adding the EPT title to his trophy collection, but Aaron Gustavson had other ideas. He ran his pocket 8s into Dominic Cullen’s A,10 and proceeded to hit a set to bounce the Brit in 5th place. Building on his momentum after Cullen’s elimination, Gustavson proceeded to relieve Martin Gudvangen of most of his chips too, leaving him an easy target for Nikolai Senninger who knocked him out in 4th. Despite the elimination though, most of Gudvangen’s chips landed in Gustavson’s stack, and the few BBs that he took off the 4th place finisher proved insufficient for Senninger to give his tournament life a significant boost. He faded away next, after he staked his remaining chips on a pair of 8s he’d picked up. He got called by Gustavson with 10,Q and as a Q landed on the board, Senninger’s EPT event was over in 3rd.
Heads-up play between Eastgate and Gustavson began with the American holding a comfortable 2-1 chip advantage. Following the dinner-break, the two players got right down to business. Eastgate dropped half of his chips on the very first hand of two handed play. He put in a preflop raise and followed it up with betting on each and every street, until Gustavson put in a raise on the Q,5,2,K,5 board, which forced him to fold. That pretty much decided the fate of the title as Eastgate ran his A,9 into Gustavson’s A,Q only a few hands later to remain unimproved by the board and to head to the rail in 2nd.
Aaron Gustavson collected £850,000 for his win.
