Before you erase the European Poker Tour London Festival from your memory banks, we bring you a run down of the renowned side event action that many believe makes the tour the very best in the world.
The tables, banners, and chips have been packed into the arctic lorries, and the dealers have been sent home for a well-deserved break.
The European Poker Tour (EPT) London Festival is done and dusted, and the focus now turns to Christmas, and the EPT Prague Festival that will run Dec 7 – 17 from its usual home in the Hilton Prague Hotel.
The festival will be remembered for the tears of its Main Event winner, Sebastian Pauli, and the charges of the two-time EPT Main Event winning wannabe’s Kevin MacPhee and Jake Cody; the exceedingly popular Andrew Chen finally crossing the finishing line first in a major EPT event, with victory in the High Roller; Brett Angell slaying demons to win the United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) Main Event; and the return to the Global Poker Index (GPI) Top 10 for the UKIPT High Roller victor Olivier Busquet.
But what about the best of the rest?
One of the primary reasons that the EPT is widely recognized as the best tour in the business is its vast network of side events. So who won what?
Let’s find out shall we.
‘The Pirate’ Max Pescatori was the only player to win two side events. Both of them were in the mixed game fields, with the Italian beating Jyri Merivirta in the £300 PL 7-Card Stud Deepstack Turbo event for £2,440, and Edouard Mignotin in the heads-up phase of the £1k H.O.R.S.E Championship for £9,350. Former EPT Champion, Jannick Wrang, finishing fourth in that one.
Other mixed game results included the British legend Jeff Duvall beating Corbin White in the heads-up phase of the £1k 8-Game Championship for £14,200; and Germany’s Tobias Hausen beating Portugal’s Joao Vieira, in heads-up action, in the £1k 10-Game Championships, for £8,980 – Stephen Chidwick (3rd), and Sebastian Saffari (5th) making final table appearances in that one.
Sorel Mizzi and “Two Months, Two Million” star Emil Patel were the winners in the £5k games. Mizzi took his live tournament earnings several thousand pounds closer to the $10m mark with a heads-up victory over the young Spanish WSOP bracelet holder, Adrian Mateos, for £61,000; and Patel beat the Triple Crown winner Davidi Kitai, in heads-up action, to capture the PLO crown. November Nine chip leader Jorryt van Hoof (3rd), David Peters (4th), Aku Joentausta (5th), and former EPT Champ Frederik Jensen (6th), all making the Mizzi final table.
Farid Jattin beat the Dutchman Rob Hollink to capture the £35,500 first prize in the £3k NL Turbo 6-Handed. It was another great final table with a Vicente Delgado (4th), Isaac Haxton (5th), Aku Joentausta (6th), and the Italian Dario Sammartino (7th) finishing strongly.
Joni Jouhkimainen of Finland beat Pierre Neuville in the £2k Turbo – 8 Handed event. 78 players competed and the final table included Randal Flowers (3rd), Bryn Kenney (4th), and the UK’s Charlie Combes (6th). Joni banked £41,600 for his victory; and the former EPT Champion, Tom Middleton, also won a £2k event, when he defeated Dario Sammartino, in heads-up action, to scoop the £76,500 first prize. Vladimir Troyanovskiy took sixth in that one.
Another Italian came close, but found no cigar, when the World Poker Tour (WPT) champion, Andrea Dato, lost out to Germany’s Amir Mozaffarian in the £1k NLHE Single Re-Entry event. Dominik Nitsche finishing fifth in that one, and Mozaffarian banked £53,100.
Jonas Mackoff finished fourth in the £200 Turbo Deepstack “Deuces Wild” event, before topping the field in the £1,500 NL Deepstack 8-Handed contest. He beat Andrew Lowe for the £30,800 first prize, and Micah Raskin (5th), Simon Trumper (6th), and Charles Chattha (8th) also made the final table.
At the lower end of the buy-in spectrum we saw three Poles taking the top three places in the £300 UKIPT London Cup: Jan Przysucha taking the top prize, with Ben Vinson finishing fifth; Karl Parrish defeated Guy Bowles to take the top prize of £4,900 in the £200 Seniors event, and in her first-ever visit to the EPT, Jacqueline Cachia from Malta won the £200 Women’s Event after beating America’s Sung Hee Yun in heads-up action.
