Results are in from the Partouche Poker Tour main event, plus we have further updates from the Pokerstars World Championship Of Online Poker
PPT comes to an end
With all the shenanigans at the Partouche Poker Tour last week it was easy to overlook the fact that there was actually a poker tournament taking place with a fairly serious amount of money at stake. Once Partouche had conceded that they were on the hook for the whole €5 million guaranteed prize pool, a first prize of €1,172,850 was waiting to be claimed by the eventual champion. A truly multi-national final table saw representatives from France, Italy, Spain, UK, Germany, Russia, Australia and USA fight it out, including the man on the hottest streak of 2012 - Dan Smith.
This time it was only a 7th place finish for Smith though, bringing his live tournament winnings for 2012 to a mere $3,633,885. Germany’s Ole Schemion had been holding on to a giant stack ever since day three of the tournament and he put it to good use as he eventually collected every chip in play after defeating Russia’s Karen Sarkisyan heads up to claim the title. As of today the Partouche Poker Tour is a thing of the past following Patrick Partouche’s announcement that season five would be the final one. No doubt that is not the last we will have seen of Partouche though as they are thought to be involved in future ventures on the live poker circuit.
WCOOP updates
Event 17 ($320 NLHE) of the WCOOP was not a particularly Euro friendly one in terms of the starting time, but despite having to play all through the night it was European players who picked up the top eight paid places in this event. A chop was agreed on with stacks fairly close four handed, and Germany’s Umumba subsequently went on to claim the bracelet and $90,659 first place.
A buy in of just $109 for event 18 made for the second biggest field of players so far this series at a whopping 9,959 entries. Once again a deal was struck, this time between the final two, with Norway’s Kodalite taking the biggest slice of the pie and also winning the money left over to play for making a total prize of $140,186.
The flow of money towards European coffers continued in event 19 ($320 NLHE) when the UK’s danface saw off the challenge from Brazil in the form of PICKLED EGG. $250,000 had been guaranteed for this tournament but a large turn out of 2794 players saw that figure smashed, leaving $132,436 for the winner.
Event 20 ($215 FLHE) looked to be shaping up interestingly as several of the Pokerstars team were still in the hunt when the bubble burst, including WSOP main event champion Pius Heinz and player of the series leader Eugene Katchalov. Neither of them could make a serious run at the final places though, leaving Richard “Tzen1” Veenman as the highest placed member of the Pokerstars team in 11th. It was the presence of another name that saw interest in the final table shoot up, as Dan “djk123” Kelly went looking for an incredible fourth WCOOP title. Kelly, playing from Australia these days, couldn’t add to his already impressive list of wins though and finished 6th whilst dirty.brasil from Canada did go on to capture the bracelet and $31,284.
As it stands Eugene Katchalov sits atop the player of the series leaderboard after a small cash took him clear of cnew27 (Clayton Newman, now playing out of Mexico.) Katchalov will certainly be enjoying his commanding position as not only are there the official prizes listed by Pokerstars at stake, he also has a prop bet going with Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier. Whoever fares the worst over the course of the series has to perform 1,000 press ups in under twelve hours, run a marathon and ride a bike from Nice to the EPT event in San Remo, Italy. For the record ElkY has 35 points to Katchalov’s 170.
For more WCOOP updates, check HighstakesDB's online poker news.