John Juanda Wins EPT12 Barcelona Main Event for €1,022,593
A sensational start to EPT Season 12 ended tonight at Casino Barcelona with the crowning of top pro John Juanda after he won the biggest EPT Main Event ever held for €1,022,593.
With 1,694 players, including a record 502 online qualifiers, the €5,300 EPT12 Barcelona Main Event not only dwarfed last year’s 1,496 Main Event players but became the biggest EPT ever held, beating the Season 7 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas which drew 1,560 players.
Juanda, who already has than $16m live tournament winnings to his name, has come close an EPT title before when he finished second to David Vamplew at EPT London in Season 7. The 44-year-old, who beat British player Steve Warburton heads-up tonight, was certainly the most experienced player at today’s final table with recorded cashes going back nearly 20 years. As well as his EPT London runner-up finish, the World Series of Poker Europe bracelet winner has a string of great results at other EPTs including runner-up to Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier in the EPT London £20k High Roller in 2008, fourth place in the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final €25k High Roller for €426,800 last season and 11th in the Main Event in Monaco in Season 10.
Warburton, 28, who took €941,613 for second place, hails from Altrincham in the UK and travels the world playing live poker. At EPT Barcelona, he was sharing an apartment with his friend Team PokerStars Pro Matthias De Meulder who also cashed in the Main Event, finishing 28th for €32,125. Warburton has played EPTs in London, Prague, Deauville and Malta but this was his first in Barcelona – and by far his best live result.
EPT8 Madrid champion Frederik Jensen finished third, and benefited substantially from the deal made three-handed; he will be taking €810,294 back home to Copenhagen after winning his seat to the event in a €320 Deep Hyper Turbo. German player Rainer Kempe was another qualifier who achieved an incredible ROI, finishing fifth for €320,400 after also winning his seat online for just €320.
1. John Juanda, Indonesia, €1,022,593
2. Steve Warburton, UK, €941,613
3. Frederik Jensen, Denmark, PokerStars qualifier, € 810,294
4. Denys Shafikov, Ukraine, €405,100
5. Rainer Kempe, Germany, PokerStars qualifier, € 320,400
6. Andreas Samuelsson, Sweden, PokerStars qualifier, € 253,900
7. Amir Touma, Lebanon, €194,100
8. Mario Sanchez, Spain, € 137,080
Among the 247 players to cash were EPT Vienna winner Oleksii Khoroshenin (13th, €78,300), Team PokerStars Pros Johnny Lodden (111th for €13,475, his 20th EPT Main Event cash) and Andre Akkari (32nd, € 27,400) plus Friend of PokerStars Natalie Hof (135th, €11,500, Team PokerStars Pro Online’s Matthias Brandner (228th, € 8,800) and Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo (240th, €8,800. Other notable finishes included PCA finalist Shyam Srinivasan (29th, €32,125), EPT Baden winner Patrik Antonius (71st, €18,320) and 2013 WSOP Main Event champion Ryan Riess (83rd, €15,600), plus PokerStars sponsored Teun Kuilboer, star of the Dutch “Bluf” TV show.
One of the highlights of this year’s Barcelona Festival was the appearance of football sensation and new member of Team PokerStars, Neymar Jr. Arriving with fellow FC Barcelona teammate Gerard Piqué, the football star took part in the one-day €25k High Roller last Tuesday. It’s clear he had a great time, posting a photo on Instagram saying: “My first international tournament, what excitement, what an incredible feeling ... Very happy for the experience!!! #IlovePoker”. Following his live debut in his adopted home city, the 23-year-old joined in a further three tourneys during the festival.
The 13-day festival, which featured a record 72 tournaments, kicked off in style with the Neymar Jr Charity Home Game raising nearly €10,000 for the star’s Neymar Jr Project Institute for children in need in his home town of Santos, Brazil. EPT Grand Final champion Steve O’Dwyer took it down after entering at the last minute and won a €5,300 EPT Main Event seat. Among the others who competed were Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo, Team Pro Leo Margets, Neymar Jr’s friend and new Friend of PokerStars Felipe Ramos and PokerStars-sponsored Miss Finland Sara Chafak.
But back to the records, and where to begin? Event after event at this year’s festival smashed through previous “biggest fields ever” with huge numbers of players filling not only the vast Gaudi tournament room but also a new specially-installed two-room marquee. The €1,100 Estrellas Main Event was the first major tourney and drew 3,292 players, a 29% increase on last season’s 2,560-strong record-breaking field. Mario Lopez, 39, who won his seat in a €100 Hyper Turbo satellite on PokerStars, made it back-to-back victories for Argentina in the event after cutting a heads-up deal with Austrian Jonn Forst to take €408,000 back home to Bariloche.
The next big winner was French pro and former World Series of Poker November Niner Sylvain Loosli who secured his first outright victory when he took down the €50k Super High Roller for €1,224,000. That event too broke records, attracting 99 total entries (compared to 77 last season) and generating a €4,753,485 prize pool. Records also tumbled in the six-flight €300 Barcelona Cup: last season, there were 2,095 entries, this year it was up 44% to 3,011 with Austria’s Thomas Scholze winning €122,110.
Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree picked up €391,000 - and the second best result of her career - when she finished third in the fiercely contested €25k High Roller. Originally scheduled as a one-day affair, the last three players (all EPT champions) called it a day at 5am and returned two days later to fight it out for a €865,900 first prize. EPT Prague winner and EPT London Super High Roller champ Martin Finger beat EPT London winner Mark Teltscher heads-up to take down the event.
There were 1,055 players who turned up for the €2k Estrellas High Roller, 31% up on last year, with Spain’s Javier Tazon taking it down for €202,630. Records also tumbled in the €10k EPT High Roller event which had 506 entries involving 401 unique players (compared to 295 last year) creating a prize pool of close to €5m. Italian pro Mustapha Kanit, who won the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final in May, cut a three-way deal with runner-up Kully Sidhu and third-placed Nick Petrangelo to take the trophy and a €738,759 first prize. Poker presenter Lynn Gilmartin took down the record-breaking €200 Women’s Event for a career-best cash of € 5,890 beating a 148-strong field.
A new-look EPTLive covered the EPT Main Event from Day 2 (in 13 languages) with hosts James Hartigan, Joe Stapleton and Matt Broughton entertaining viewers with expert coverage, quizzes and competitions. The live stream also saw the start of the EPT12 One Buck Bounty Bonanza League with Sunday Million, Sunday Storm and a $1,050 SCOOP ticket up for grabs.
President Edgar Stuchly said: “It hardly seems any time since we were celebrating the record-breaking EPT100 here in Barcelona but the turnout this season has surpassed all possible expectations. We offer a huge thank you to all 5,738 players who came here for this amazing festival, making it not only the biggest EPT ever held, but one of the biggest poker festivals in the world. We now look forward to seeing everyone at EPT Malta in October.”
The EPT joined forces with the national Estrellas Poker Tour for the debut event of EPT Season 12, running August 18-30, 2015 at Casino Barcelona. Across the whole festival, there were an extraordinary 22,696 tournament entries (61% up on last year’s 14,056 entries) with close to €40 million (€39,422,529) awarded in prizes.
