Luca Fiorini used to run a franchise chain of estate agents in Rome but gave it up to focus on poker. He has been playing poker seriously for around four years now. He only ever plays tournaments, travelling once a month to destinations around his native Italy including Sanremo. He also plays online a lot where his best result was finishing second in a PokerStars.it Sunday Special for €20,000. He came to Barcelona without his girlfriend Romana because he says he needs to concentrate but joked: “If I win, we’ll get married, buy a house and have children. Not if I come second though!” Fiorini won his seat to Barcelona on PokerStars.it.
Kresten "Big Toro" Nielsen, also known as 'The Killer' in his native Denmark, has never had a big live cash but he has a couple of big cashes on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. He's played some EPTs before, his first being the most memorable. It was in 2008 in Copenhagen and he knocked out so many players on the first day that the local Ace magazine put him on the cover of their daily news letter, naming him Kresten 'The Killer “. The name has stuck ever since. Nielsen won his seat to EPT Barcelona in a €320 Deep Hyper-Turbo qualifier in June.
Gury discovered poker in 2008 during an evening with friends. He started playing live cash games and, motivated by his success, then started playing on PokerStars. He also started watching a lot of videos, including EPT finals.
Benoit was absolutely passionate about his new hobby and, at the end of 2009 he started playing live tournaments, where he also performed well. But the turning point in his poker career was when he qualified for the 2012 French TV show “Direct Poker” and then won it. He said: “Playing poker on TV, it is very stressful! Everything happens very quickly ... but it's great!”
Gury’s prize was a sponsorship contract with PokerStars.fr worth $100,000 in tickets for EPTs, France Poker Series tourneys and the French Championship of Online Poker. His biggest cash before now was making the final of a PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final €1k side event.
Chad HollowayEmpty feature table before the final 9 players retook their seats
What a way to kick off Season 10 of the European Poker Tour! The EPT10 Barcelona Main Event drew an astounding 1,234 players to the Casino Barcelona, and after an intense week of play we're down to the final table of eight. Perhaps the most accomplished player remaining is Tom “hitthehole” Middleton, who begins with the chip lead for the third day in a row!
Middleton received tremendous support from his fellow Brits, both live and online, and we expect he'll have a rowdy and boisterous rail here today. Likewise, last year two Finns, Ilari Sahamies and Joni Jouhkimainen (the latter is chip leader at the €10,000 High Roller final table), must have set a precedent by wearing sparkly fedoras at the final table because this year the two Finns remaining, Kimmo Kurko and Pasi Sormunen, have taken to wearing the same hats. The question is, can either of them do what their countrymen failed to do last year and capture the title?
Others still in contention include Kresten Nielsen, who is second in chips with 7.3 million, and Eduard Bhaggoe, the short stack with 1.615 million. The remaining eight players are guaranteed at least €102,430, but all of them have their eyes firmly fixed on the €1,067,000 first-place prize, which also comes with the coveted trophy and stylish SLYDE watch.
Here's a look at the EPT10 Barcelona final table:
Seat
Player
County
Count
1
Andreas Christoforou
Cyprus
2,560,000
2
Kimmo Kurko
Finland
2,265,000
3
Pasi Sormunen
Finland
3,070,000
4
Tom Middleton*
UK
9,850,000
5
Eduard Bhaggoe
Netherlands
1,615,000
6
Luca Fiorini*
Italy
4,610,000
7
Kresten Nielsen*
Denmark
7,300,000
8
Benoit Gury
France
5,610,000
*PokerStars Qualifier
The sixth and final day will kick off at 1:00 p.m. CET at the Casino Barcelona, though the live stream that we'll reporting off of is on a one-hour delay. Be sure to check the PokerNews live coverage in a couple of hours for all action and eliminations on the way to crowning the latest EPT champion.
While you wait, check out this video on how to enjoy the beach here in Barcelona:
