Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event Draws Record-Breaking 1,798 Players
Prior to Season 10 of the EPT kicking off in Barcelona, the Estrellas Poker Tour (ESPT) was in town as part of the stop’s poker festival. The ESPT €1,000 Main Event ended up setting records after attracting an astounding 1,798 player – making it the biggest 1K event ever held outside Las Vegas.
The field was littered with notables, but only a few managed to make it through to the final table including British PokerStars qualifier Paul Nunes, who held a massive chip lead with 14,475,000 (more than twice as much as his next closest competitor); and Brazil’s Marcelo Fonseca, an LAPT Uruguay champion who was the Day 2 chip leader.
Both of those players made it to four-handed play, which saw Nunes lock up the biggest guaranteed payday.
"Four-handed. I'd just sucked out and knocked out the short stack out in fifth so had the most amount of chips... I felt I was the better player left but reduced variance and the deal was fairly good, I think," Nunes told the PokerStars Blog.
With a deal in place, the four players battled it out for the title. Fonseca was the first to drop from the foursome, taking home €121,000, and then Germany’s Alin Sameeian followed him out the door in third place for €158,457.
That set up a heads-up battle between Nunes, who placed third in the 2012 World Series of Poker Event #41 $3,000 No Limit Hold’em for $290,407, and Germany’s Jahn Soenke, who had begun the day third in chips. The latter eventually walked away with the title and €169,136, but Nunes ended up the big winner with €204,589 in prize money.
Read more on the tournament in the PokerStars Blog.
Estrellas 4 Barcelona Main Event Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Jahn Soenke | Germany | €169,136* |
| 2nd | Paul Nunes | UK | €204,589* |
| 3rd | Alin Sameeian | Germany | €158,457* |
| 4th | Marcelo Fonseca | Brazil | €121,000* |
| 5th | Marc Pujol Cases | Spain | €67,400 |
| 6th | Pablo Cusí | Spain | €53,800 |
| 7th | Lukasz Roczniak | Poland | €41,100 |
| 8th | Alfonso Amendola | Italy | €29,000 |
*Denotes four-handed deal