Martin Finger Wins EPT Prague 2011
Germany has scored yet another major poker victory tonight with PokerStars qualifier Martin Finger taking down the €5,3000 EPT Prague Main Event for €720,000. He joins a growing roster of German speakers who have walked away with EPT trophies this season – Ronny Kaiser (from Switzerland) won the season’s first event in Tallinn, Martin Schleich won EPT Barcelona and Benny Spindler won EPT London.
As well as the title and cash prize, Finger, 21, from Frankenberg in East Germany, also received a stunning bracelet from EPT Season 8 Official Bracelet Sponsor Shamballa Jewels worth more than €10,000.
Business science student Finger, a Supernova Elite on PokerStars, won his seat to Prague via PokerStars’ step satellites. He took up poker three years ago, kicking off in home games with friends before finding his way into online poker. Although today’s victory was his first ever EPT Main Event cash, he has had considerable success on the tour already - runner-up in the EPT Barcelona €1k event for €42,000, third in the EPT Barcelona Heads-up tourney in Season 7 and ninth in a €1k EPT7 Berlin side event.
He said: “It feels really amazing to win. I feel great. It was a pretty tough final table but I just tried to be really aggressive and it worked.” Finger is having a knee operation in January so won’t make it to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas but he says he plans to play a lot more EPTs in future.
His victory came after a grueling four-hour heads-up battle against Dutch banker David Boyacin. Boyaciyan, 32, is a recreational player who took the poker world by storm last month when he won the Amsterdam Master Classics for €382,200. His runner-up finish here in Prague has netted him another €535,000.
Among the 722 players from 50 countries who competed at EPT Prague were German Team PokerStars Pro and world champion Pius Heinz, and fellow Team Pro – and WSOP runner-up – Martin Staszko from the Czech Republic. But it was Irish Team PokerStars Pro Jude Ainsworth who came closest to making the final, finishing 14th for €27,000. His teammate, Juan Manuel Pastor from Spain, came 30th for €17,000 while EPT6 San Remo champion Liv Boeree finished 83rd for €9,000.
As well as Finger, 151 other players won their seat in the EPT Prague Main Event on PokerStars. A total of 722 players from 50 countries competed overall, creating a €3,501,700 prize pool.
As well as the Main Event, there were also 20 well-attended side events. Team PokerStars Pro Ana Marquez’s boyfriend Bryn Kenney won the EPT Prague €2k side event, WCOOP champion Thomas Pedersen from Denmark won the €3k Heads-Up for €20,950, Svetlana Lebedeva won the €330 Ladies Event and EPT Copenhagen champion Anton Wigg won the €5k NL Turbo event for €72,000. At the time of writing, American John Andress and EPT Dortmund champion Mike McDonald from Canada were fighting it out for the €10k High Roller title.
Ukrainian Denys Drobyna won Skrill’s Last Longer contest at Prague having outlasted more than 100 players who took part. He finished fifth in the Main Event for €160,000 - with his €5,300 buy-in credited back into his Skrill account. Skrill, the Official Payment Provider Sponsor for EPT Season 8, has been running Last Longer contests at all this season’s EPTs.
EPT Prague took place December 5-10 at Golden Prague Poker at the Hilton Prague Hotel. The next event of EPT Season 8 is the $10,000 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas.
Source: www.pokerstars.com
