Justin Bonomo has won the European Poker Tour Grand Final Super High Roller event in Monte Carlo, earning a super €1.64m for his troubles. Bonomo began final table play with a sizable chip advantage, a lead he never relinquished along his path to glory. Eight players started the day, but only six would finish in the money, leaving Eugene Katchalov and Jonathan Duhamel on the outside looking in. When it got down to heads-up play with Tobias Reinkemeier, Bonomo had knocked out four of his original seven opponents and his chip advantage had been raised to 5:1, Reinkemeier eventually settled for second and €1.06m, while the rest of the money men finished thusly: Bertrand Grospelier (€621k); Patrik Antonius (€443k); Masa Kagawa (€354k) and Daniel Negreanu (€310k).
With the nosebleed action drawn to a close, the focus shifts to the EPT Grand Final Main Event. The €10k buy-in attracted 217 players on Day 1A, 160 of which survived to resume the fight on Day 2. Day 1B gets underway at noon local time on Thursday.
As one EPT season winds down, the schedule for Season 9 has been posted. The number of stops has shrunk from 13 to eight (counting the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure). However, the EPT plans to partner with local tour operators – including the UK & Ireland Poker Tour and the Estrellas Poker Tour – to boost the number of individual events, expanding each stop into a cornucopia of poker plenty. In addition to lower buy-in events, the EPT is adding a €10k Championship Series consisting of heads-up, PLO and 8-game championships. The €100k Super High Rollers planned for the PCA and the Grand Final will remain, plus a €50k High Roller event will be added to the Barcelona stop. The provisional EPT Season 9 sked looks as follows: EPT Barcelona (Aug. 15-25); EPT San Remo (Oct. 3-11); EPT Prague (Dec. 5-15); PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (Jan. 6-15, 2013); EPT Deauville (Jan. 30–Feb. 9); EPT London (March 6-16); EPT Berlin (April 24 – May 4) and EPT Monte Carlo (May 6-15).
