If you have ever lived among a big family, you know there are times when all of a sudden you show up for a holiday dinner and discover you have three new aunts, six new cousins, and occasionally a new grandfather. Once you get used to the idea that you’re going to need more chairs and a French to English dictionary so you can talk to your new Aunty Monique, you often find these new family members are even better than the ones you have known for years.

With that in mind, meet the the 12 new members of the PokerStars streaming family.

There are several milestone moments in the career of a poker player. Finding a group of poker friends, that would be one. Winning your first tournament, there’s another. Going on your first poker trip, that’s a big step.

Kalidou Sow ticked off another one at the European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Monte Carlo this week: sticking on a PokerStars Ambassador patch for the first time at a major live event.

After the announcement of Sow joining Team PokerStars was made on April 10, it was clear that Frenchman’s big unveiling would take place in Monaco (almost home soil, but not quite).

“My first stop as a PokerStars Ambassador has been amazing,” Sow tells us midway through Day 2 of the €5,300 Main Event. “Wearing the patch for the first time, it’s been incredible, and the relationship between the other ambassadors is fantastic too.”

Unfortunately for Sow, who found himself sat up on the feature table with a 45,000 stack to start the day, he busted within the first level. You can watch how that played out below:

Sow may have said goodbye from the Main Event, but he’s been saying hello to just about everything and everyone else this week. From organised meet and greets to local players hailing him a hero, this trip has been non-stop for the 38-year-old.

“The reaction of the French players to me here in Monaco has been surprising, but it makes me very happy,” he says.

Born in Paris, where he still lives with his wife and two children (both boys, aged 7 and 3), Sow balances his family life with one as a globetrotting poker sensation.

“I really want to play poker as much as possible at the moment because volume in poker is the best answer to variance,” he says. “But I’m also a father, and I have to manage my family life too. These past few years, though, I’ve wanted to grind as much as I can.

What does a normal day look like in the life of Sow?

“My wife takes the kids to school in the morning, and I bring them home in the afternoon. I spoil them to compensate for the times when I have to be away. I don’t know if that’s a good thing to do, but I do it anyway, so who cares,” he says. “But when I’m at home, I really like to stay at home. My wife actually has to tell me to go out and see friends or whatever. But I just like being at home with them, that’s an ideal day in my life.”

Kalidou Sow in action at EPT Monte Carlo

When Sow took down the PokerStars Festival London Main Event for £121,803 and a Platinum Pass to the PSPC back in January 2018 (just one month after winning the PokerStars Championship Prague Main Event for €675,000), he told us that his wife didn’t normally accompany him on poker trips. “She always wants to come with me to events and I say ‘No, no, no.’ But OK! You can come with me to the PCA, my dear,” he said at the time.

The Bahamas and the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) was always going to be different.

“She loved the Bahamas, obviously. My kids were there too. We visited some of the islands and went to the beach, but as I was playing a lot I didn’t get as much time with them. Even so, she really enjoyed her time at the PCA,” he says.

Sow has previously stated that it’s his kids who make him the man he is today. But are they aware of what their old man actually does?

“My oldest son already knows and understands what it is I do for a living,” Sow says. “When my son is at school and people ask him what his dad does for a job, he tells them: ‘He’s a poker champion.’ So he knows. He plays with cards and chips at home, so he’s into it already.”

Kalidou Sow

How would Sow react if they wanted to follow in dad’s footsteps and pursue poker when they were old enough?

“What’s most important is that I just want my kids to be happy,” he says. “My whole life I’ve been chasing money. I don’t want that for my kids. I just want them to be happy and to do what they want. I’ll always be there for them. Whatever job they decide they’d like to do, I’ll be happy for them if they are happy. I want them to follow their passion.

“I was raised in a difficult neighbourhood outside of Paris,” he continues. “There was violence, a lot of drug issues. I didn’t like it. We didn’t have holidays or anything. I would say I’ve had a good life, but not an easy one. I’m doing everything I can for my kids to have a better life than I had.”

Everything Kalidou Sow has done in his life has led him to Monaco for EPT Monte Carlo. But thinking back to when he was a youngster playing on the streets of Paris, what did he make of Monaco? Did he ever think he’d end up here one day?

“Monaco was considered an unreachable place. It was only for the rich, certainly not for me, or anyone I knew,” he says. “Now, being able to come to Monaco every year and play big tournaments for a living…it’s just amazing.”

Another milestone ticked off. ✓

MORE ABOUT KALIDOU SOW: AMBASSADOR ANNOUNCEMENT
CAREER TIMELINE AND QUOTES | PRAGUE CHAMPION | PSF LONDON WINNER

Interview conducted with help from Henri Frey of PokerStarsBlog.fr.

If you don’t know who Seth “SFisch04” Fischer is, that’s partially by design. Though he’s a PokerStars qualifier here at EPT Monte Carlo, he doesn’t maintain a PocketFives profile and says he enjoys flying under the radar. But it’s also partly chance. Had a single card fallen friendly in 2008, things might have been different.

Born and raised in Florida, Fischer was at college in Atlanta when he became one of the millions who picked up poker during the Moneymaker boom.

“I actually ran a poker game out of my apartment during grad school,” he recalls on a sunny day outside the Sporting Club Monte-Carlo. “I would go to school in the day and then at night I would run the poker game. I was just trying to get better and play poker on the side to make some extra money. I had no grandiose ideas of trying to become a professional or anything.”

Fischer had finished the coursework for a degree in sport administration and only needed to complete an internship to graduate. When the one he had lined up fell through, he saw an opportunity in disguise.

“All during that time I just needed an excuse to play poker, to give it a shot, so I told myself, ‘I’ll give myself two months while I’m looking for internships to play poker full-time.’ Since then I haven’t really looked back. I started making more money than I’d ever made my entire life.”

Marriage followed, as did a move to California when his wife began pursuing her own graduate degree. And then came a moment that changed everything.

“That’s when it sunk in”

The first cash on Fischer’s Hendon Mob profile is a final table appearance at the 2008 WSOP worth more than $330,000. It remains the largest of his career. People remember that final because of two things: the spectacular number of bad beats handed out and the guy who won the bracelet.

Seth “SFisch04” Fischer in Monte Carlo

The scarf-wearing, diminutive, hyper-aggressive Italian pro Dario Minieri earned his first WSOP bracelet and more than $528,000 for the win. But just 10 hands earlier, Minieri had been one card away from taking Fischer’s place as the runner-up.

Fischer had caught a break of his own earlier, cracking Justin Filtz’s pocket aces with A-K and knocking him out in third place. That gave him a big lead as heads-up play began against Minieri. Then Fischer picked up K♠K♦.

Fischer re-raised Minieri’s opener; Minieri jammed with 4♠3♠, and Fischer snap-called with his cowboys. Fischer was a four-to-one favorite before the flop fell J♠8♠2♦. He still had 70 percent equity after the 4♦ turn, but the 4♥ on the river gave Minieri three of a kind and turned the entire game around.

Within minutes Minieri was doing interviews and taking his winner’s photo. “I have never seen so many bad beats in one day,” Minieri told PokerStars Blog at the time. “I feel very lucky.”

Fischer, meanwhile, headed off to the payout cage for his first WSOP cash.

“I was happy because this was way better than I was ever expecting to do,” Fischer says. “And honestly, I thought I would get there again. I remember going into it Dario was already kind of a personality, he was the big favorite going in. I thought I actually played better than him at the final table. Obviously I got super-lucky to bust the guy in third place. And when I was heads-up for the bracelet, with the chip lead, all-in with 80 percent equity — it’s one of those things.”

When ESPN began airing that year’s WSOP coverage, Fischer caught the episode where they showed Minieri beating him heads-up.

“That’s when it sunk in. It was really painful looking back. At the time I didn’t care [about finishing in second]. But once I saw it on TV afterwards, it was like — there’s a very real possibility that’s the closest I would ever get.

“It still stings, honestly — I’m not going to lie. It probably motivates me to play sometimes. But you have to deal with it. That’s poker.”

A long and winding road

Painful as it was, that WSOP experience opened up doors for Fischer. He dipped his toes into playing higher buy-in events later that year, playing in the Trump Classic at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He was in Philadelphia to visit family and saw a $5,000 Main Event on the schedule.

“I thought, ‘I can do whatever I want. I can play the bigger buy-ins.’ Then I show up and there’s like 30 people and even back then I recognized 25 of them. I was like, ‘This is stupid.'”

And then he went and won the thing for $34K.

“(For winning) they gave me a Movada, a pretty decent watch,” he says. “Then the floor man said, ‘Hey, too bad, last year we gave out a Rolex!’ The whole environment seemed kind of — I don’t want to say unprofessional, but not fancy at all. The Taj was kind of a dump. I think within three years from that point it was closed. There was no special stage or anything, we were just out in the middle of the casino floor. I can’t complain though, it was my only live tournament victory.”

More live cashes followed, including a WSOP Circuit Main Event final in Atlantic City featuring familiar names like Andy Frankenberger, Chris Klodnicki, and eventual champion Chris Bell. Fischer’s newly flush bankroll also allowed him to begin taking on higher buy-in tournaments online. After Black Friday he began traveling from his home base in Berkeley, California, to Vancouver, Canada, where he booked a win in the Super Tuesday in 2012 and later came within a few spots of repeating the feat in 2015 and 2016. It’s a trend that continues to the present day: Fischer took down the winning the High Roller Club $530 Bounty Builder a few months ago.

These days Fischer’s live poker schedule is mainly focused on Las Vegas, where he says he plays about 30 events most summers around the time of the World Series. Though he says he doesn’t particularly enjoy the live poker road life anymore — he doesn’t care for living in the casino, and the crew of friends he came up with has slowly drifted out of the game, meaning he’s often the only one of his group of friends traveling anymore — there are a few spots that he enjoys visiting if he can win a seat in a satellite.

Monte Carlo: the “best environment in the world to play”

EPT Monte Carlo tops that list.

“I’ll play more satellites for Monte Carlo because I like it here. PCA, same type of deal. Everything from the accommodations to the poker room being right on the water — the whole environment is second to none. It’s the best environment in the world to play, for me. I can’t imagine a more luxurious place to play. So once I came last year and had such a good time, I knew I definitely would like to come back.”

While variance is an occupational hazard for every poker player, Fischer’s experiences over the last 15 years have given him perspective that lets him roll with whatever the game throws his way.

“As I’ve gotten older it’s hard to go to any live tournament, especially when I’m playing two or three events at the most, and say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to win!’ or ‘I’m going to make the final table!’ because you’ll end up being disappointed. So you try to temper your expectations a little bit.

“That’s the reason I come here to Monte Carlo and to the Bahamas. Even if I don’t do well with poker, at least I’m in a nice place and I can enjoy myself.”

As part of our 200 billion hand celebration, we’re giving you the chance to win Spin & Go tickets when you vote on some of your favourite poker moments.

Vote for the best winning moment right here.

The people have spoken!

Yesterday (Wednesday, May 1) on Twitter, we asked you for your best winning moments from the annals of Twitch poker. You answered, we listened, and here we present you with the top four nominees.

Watch the video clips from the shortlisted hands below, then click the link to the tweet at the bottom to cast your vote.

WINNING MOMENT #1

SolidPenis

WINNING MOMENT #2

xflixx

WINNING MOMENT #3

Lex Veldhuis

WINNING MOMENT #4

Arlie Shaban

Head to this tweet and vote now!

Best. Winning. Moment. Ever.
There are four to choose from, watch them at https://t.co/Ylr7q9ygcw then pick your favourite. #SpinAndGlobes #200BnHands

— PokerStars (@PokerStars) May 2, 2019

Opening a PokerStars account is easy. Click here to get an account in minutes.

We’d bet there aren’t many poker players at this European Poker Tour stop in Monte Carlo with a story as interesting as Maria Konnikova’s. The psychology PhD, New York Times best-selling author and PokerStars Ambassador is back in Monte Carlo for her third time, marking the two-year anniversary since she started playing poker from scratch.

We caught up with Konnikova in Monaco to talk about her study regime, the powerful poker minds she mines, and how the writing of her highly anticipated new book, The Biggest Bluff, has been balanced with her poker grind.

PokerStars Blog: Hi Maria, how has your EPT Monte Carlo been so far?

Maria Konnikova: The trip has been great in terms of Monte Carlo, but it’s been terrible in terms of results. I’ve bubbled everything I’ve played, including the Main Event where I busted 14 off the money. It was actually the last hand of the level. It’s not like I made any bad mistakes or anything. I just lost a flip with ace-king against queens, got short, and then got it in with sevens against eights.

What are your plans once you leave Monaco?

I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker for the whole summer. After Monte Carlo, I’m going to take May off to hopefully finish some significant chunks of my book. I’ll be in Vegas from June 1st right through to the Main Event.

EPT MONTE CARLO
LATEST | SCHEDULE | NEED-TO-KNOW | TIMELINE | IMAGE GALLERY | RESULTS

Do you ever write on the road, or do you always take time away from poker to focus on writing?

I’ve taken a few chunks off. Normally after the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in January, I go to some of the World Poker Tour (WPT) stops, there are multiple things I would have done. I didn’t do any of that this year. Between PCA and now I’ve mostly had off, aside from a few things like playing one tournament.

I think it’s a bad idea to step away completely, just because poker is something where not only do you constantly have to study but if you’re just studying and not playing, you’re not consolidating the concepts. I’m not planning to quit poker so it would be a bad mistake for me to completely disappear off the grid, even if I were studying for an hour or two a day but not playing. But it’s really mostly been writing, and will be for the next three weeks. 

It must be difficult doing both at once.

I think once the book is done it will be easier to have a balance where I’m doing both at once. Books are different from magazine pieces and shorter things because they require more all-in concentration. After the book is done it will be easier to keep playing at a steady pace and balance that with taking a day here and there to write. 

Do you think poker will always be a part of your life, even when the book is complete?

Konnikova still loves the poker grind

Well, we’ll see. This is one of the themes of the book. Poker has taught me that you just never know what’s going to happen. All you can do is make the best decision with the information you have in the current moment, and then adjust as it changes. As of now, I’m really enjoying poker still and I’m learning a lot from it. It’s challenging me. I feel like there’s still a lot of growth opportunity, and I don’t just mean in terms of my poker strategy, although that too obviously, but more just growth opportunity personally. There’s still a lot the game can give me, and while I’m still enjoying it, why would I stop playing? The moment that changes, I’ll re-evaluate. As of now, I have no plans to stop playing poker, and I have no plans to stop being a writer.

MORE ABOUT MARIA KONNIKOVA:
PCA NATIONAL VICTORY | AMBASSADOR ANNOUNCEMENT | WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM | WSOP INTERVIEW

You mentioned your balance between studying and playing, but what does your study process look like at the moment?

My study depends on the day. Some days I’m running sims, so I had to buy a separate computer for PioSOLVER. I’ve always had a Mac, and obviously, no poker software works on a Mac!

Some days I’ll just work on that and go through some hands and try to figure out what the solver is telling me. Some days it will be watching live streams and archived footage from Super High Rollers or some final tables with players I’ve played against. When I watch those, it’s not passive watching. It’s very active watching. So it will take me at least two hours to watch an hour of the stream. I’ll stop it, rewind it, figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, why they chose that bet size, what’s going on, etc.

When it’s the Super High Rollers, they are the best players in the world who really know what they’re doing. I can look at their decisions and try to figure out what they’re thinking, and also what mistakes they’re making in-game. They’re not computers–OK, I think some people might be computers–but most people aren’t. Sometimes I’ll watch an EPT final table where it’s some of the best players in the world, but also some not. It’s really interesting to see what they do then. I pause and rewind and really go through the hands and think about it. But you’re no longer thinking: “Why is this the best decision?” You’re thinking: “Oh, these are mistakes they make on a regular basis”, “These are the type of hands they like to three-bet on a regular basis”, etc. I think you can get a lot from watching those type of streams. 

How has your relationship with your poker mentor Erik Seidel changed as you’ve progressed in the game?

Erik Seidel hugs Konnikova after her $85K PCA National victory (Jan 2018)

So, sometimes I’ll study with my own hand history reviews, and that’s mostly what I do with Erik. We’ll go over hands that I’ve played and also hands that he’s played, and we talk about what the different options were, what the things to think about were at every point.

The relationship has evolved to the point where it’s much more of a conversation and a lot less “What do I do here?” Sometimes I still ask that, because that’s the beauty of no limit hold’em. You will always run into interesting spots, no matter how long you’ve played.

Erik told me a hand that he played here in Monte Carlo where he said it was a really interesting hand and “I don’t know what I was supposed to do here”. It makes me feel a lot better about myself when I realise that even the Erik Seidels of the world will sometimes run into spots where they’re not sure.

You’ve got to know a lot of the other top players over the past couple of years too. Is there anyone else you reach out to?

The person I work with the most aside from Erik is Phil Galfond. He’s amazing. Phil has so many things going on—his Run It Once training site, his Run It Once poker site, his new baby—he’s got so many things. But I’ll write him a quick text message or an email, saying: “Hey, interesting spot, blah blah blah, would love to hear your thoughts when you have a moment.” Then he’ll send me back a book. All of a sudden I’ll get an email that’s multiple paragraphs, correctly punctuated, with “On the other hand, you could consider…” and it’s just a beautiful work of art.

Phil Galfond: poker genius, businessman, and…poet?

Sometimes he’ll send me a text message poem of analysis. Phil really takes the time, and really loves the game. With him and Erik, I’m so lucky because these are two people who are incredibly well-rounded outside of poker and have so many interests but also have a passion for poker that’s really pure. They love the game and the intellectual challenge. Had I learned it from different people, I wouldn’t love the game as much as I do. It’s such a pure relationship. 

Click here for more information on Maria Konnikova’s forthcoming book The Biggest Bluff.

Boutros Pierre Naim is a man of will.

The Lebanese-born, poker-playing Monaco resident — and PokerStars qualifier to the EPT Main Event this week — once quit his investment banking job on a whim because his company moved offices from one part of London to another. It increased his commuting time and Naim wouldn’t stand for it.

Shorter commute? Check. Better weather than London? Big check.

“For me,” he says, “this was basically a no-go.” So he moved to Monaco.

But when he was in his 60s and living in the principality, Naim found himself missing his son, who had moved to Massachusetts to attend Babson College. Naim decided to move nearby and applied to Harvard University — not to seek a degree but simply to take courses on subjects like economics, the history of the Ottoman Empire, and meta-ethics. He applied for admission through the same process as any other student, leading to some bureaucratic-themed amusement.

“I have seven years of university studies over and above my baccalaureate, so it was fun trying to retrieve all those diplomas from over 35 years,” Naim says. “At the end of the day I got a filigreed diploma reading, ‘We declare Mr. Naim got his diploma in the session of July 1975.’ And it was signed Paris, January 2011. Thirty-six years later!”

At Harvard, Naim became close friends with a Nobel Prize winner in economics and spent his days in the Widener Library, plucking books from the stacks at will and plundering the JSTOR archives for knowledge that simply wasn’t widely available earlier in his life. “I really loved the atmosphere,” he says of the eight months he spent there. “I really enjoyed butting heads with 20-year-olds all the time.”

While his surroundings may have changed again now — he moved back to Monaco a few years ago — there is a sense in which things these days aren’t much different for Naim. He still spends his time butting heads with highly intelligent people decades his junior. The only difference is that those interactions now come over chips and cards against the world’s most talented poker players.

“Being 30 years older than the average guy, I know exactly how they perceive me. Like, ‘Here comes the fish, we’re going to kill him.’ And I’ve made a lot of money and won a lot of hands because the other guy tried to frighten me.”

When Naim was a young man, he swam the breaststroke and medley competitively. “I used to swim eight kilometers a day,” he says. “If I entered a race, in the worst-case scenario I would end up in second or third.” The state of Naim’s back these days makes it tough for him to run or play tennis, so instead he plays poker — but he’s not entirely comfortable with the nature of the game.

“Considering that I need some adrenaline flowing, the only place I can find it is poker,” he says. “Some skill and some intuition is required so I do that. I think poker is one of the most ungrateful sports in history — you can study all you want, you can make the right decision, and you don’t win. My theory is that the best poker player in the world is an unknown guy who still hasn’t done more than one level in any tournament because he loses every time with hard luck. There’s an undiscovered gem somewhere playing for the last 10 years, always busting.”

In that case, does that player’s polar opposite also exist? Someone who makes the wrong move time and again yet comes out smelling like roses?

“I respect Fedor, he’s a good friend mine, he has one of my paintings in his flat in Vienna, but he got very lucky!”

“Yes,” he says, and starts to tick off players he thinks have borne some resemblance to this theoretical monster, at least in particular circumstances. There’s Jonathan Duhamel (“Give me a break, every hand he won making the worst decision in the world!”). There’s Phil Hellmuth (“When he won the WSOP in Cannes, that was the luckiest man in the world!”). And, a little closer to his heart, there’s Fedor Holz. (“I respect Fedor, he’s a good friend of mine, he has one of my paintings in his flat in Vienna. I really like him but he got very lucky, it’s unbelievable.”)

There’s no venom or bitterness from Naim when he says these things — he’s just calling it as he sees it. Talk to him about his experience at the US Poker Open at the Aria in Las Vegas last year, where he finished in second place, and he’s effusive in his praise of the players who impress him.

“I like to play with the pros like David Peters, Justin Bonomo, Stephen Chidwick,” Naim says. “They deserve what they have, because they work hard, these guys. They’re really lovely players to play with because they’re serious, they’re disciplined, [not like playing with] some clown in the $1K or the Main Event going all-in with rags. You play with serious people and they bluff you, but at least you have a pattern.”

Justin Bonomo: In Naim’s good books

At the end of that tournament, despite being an amateur at a table full of pros, Naim found himself heads-up against Justin Bonomo. “I am probably the only one who was one card away from beating Bonomo,” says Naim. “He had just started in February last year his incredible run. He got very lucky. I had Q-8, he had 8-7. The board was 6-6-3, so check-check. Turn 8, I go all-in — heads-up when I pair, I’m all-in, I don’t want to wank around. He calls and sees I’m beating him with the kicker, and then there was an ace so we had to split. I hate the chop! When I saw the producers later and Jeremy Ausmus and these guys, they were all like, ‘We were rooting for you!’ Because I wasn’t taking it seriously whatsoever. I was enjoying myself.”

Naim doesn’t care much for traveling to play poker, partly because he doesn’t like spending a week at a time living in a casino and partly because of his back.

“When I ended up heads-up with Bonomo, it was the beginning of the US Poker Open series. Maria Ho asked me, ‘Are you going to continue the series, you have earned points.‘ I was like, are you joking? I’m leaving tomorrow! You want me to throw it all away? I just won $136K, give me a break!”

A few years ago, though, he played a circuit of EPT Main Events funded by a win in a Prague high roller satellite. “I ended up in the final five entries. Mustapha Kanit was the bubble boy. So I said, ‘Hold on guys, I don’t want that [the tournament seat]. Give me cash.’ Kanit says he’ll buy it for 47K, I said done.”

Naim says that one day he’d like to replicate that tour on a bigger scale.

“Even though I have the means to play the high rollers, I respect the money I made elsewhere. If it was 30 years ago I might have. But to play those bigger-stage games I think you should have 10 times the buy-in and dedicate yourself to play these tournaments over the year. You don’t play one tournament and that’s all you have for your budget, that’s ridiculous. The minute I have 250K to throw away, I probably would do a year of 25Ks around the world. If I fuck up in one or two or three, I am going to cash in one of those and catch up on what I’ve lost.”

“One of these days I will follow them.” He looks away for a moment and then laughs. “But I think I’ll have to do it in the next two years or I’ll die!”

There’s a lot of talk these days about making poker fun again. Anyone who really wants that to happen should hope Naim follows through on his plan. A man of will like him might be just the spice they’ve been awaiting.

It’s dinner break time here on Day 3 of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event and only 43 players remain from a starting field of 922. Among the high rollers and past EPT champions sits Evy Widvey Kvilhaug, an online qualifier from Norway. She has a small handful of live cashes on her Hendon Mob profile from tournaments in Norway and Ireland, but this marks her first appearance on the EPT.

Widvey’s journey here started in a €55 PokerStars satellite. A win there booked her seat in a €530 qualifier. “I almost bubbled, but I made it,” she told PokerStars Blog on the floor a few minutes ago. Avoiding that bubble earned her a Main Event package, an experience she’s been soaking in for three days now.

She’s in the money

As the tournament has progressed, Widvey has been seated with some of the biggest names in the game. Earlier today she sat to the left of both Sam Greenwood and Christoph Vogelsang. She’s also taken out a few players along the way, including last year’s €25K High Roller runner-up, Shyngis Satubayev.

“It’s real scary!” she said of tangling with the big guns. “I’m really out of my depth. But it’s fun too, because I’ve seen a lot of them on TV.”

We asked Widvey if she had any expectations of cashing when she arrived here and she quickly answered in the negative. Now that she’s there, though, she making the most of it.

“It’s been so much fun. No matter what happens now, I’m super happy.”

Three months ago Ambrose Travers was in the Bahamas. He and a group of friends were there to cheer on Darren Millar as the latter lived out his Platinum Pass dream in the PSPC. It was such a good time that nobody wanted the party to end.

Now Travers is playing on Day 4 of the EPT Monte Carlo event, where he is one of just 30 players remaining. It’s something of a sequel to the PSPC festivities: while Travers battles with Sam Greenwood and Nicolas Chouity on the TV table, Millar and some of the same friends that cheered him on are here rooting for Travers.

“They’re the best friends in the world, they are,” he told PokerStars Blog this afternoon. “Darren did so well in the Bahamas, we couldn’t wait to get back home to get to the next tournament. PokerStars ran such a marvelous party there, we says, ‘What’s the next big event?’ The next big event was this one.”

So he jumped into a €5.50 satellite. Six hours later, after winning that first satellite and then the €55 and €530 qualifiers that it fed into, he’d earned himself a package to play in Monte Carlo.

“I came over here to play with the best players in the world, in the best place in the world,” he said. “I thought it would be great to get a min-cash. And now here’s 30 left out of 900.”

Travers says he doesn’t have any expectations from this point onward. But to make the final table would surely be something special, wouldn’t it?

“Oh!” he says, grabbing his chest and beaming a huge grin. “Heart-stopping. It would be absolutely heart-stopping.”

This week’s announcement of 12 new PokerStars Ambassadors has proved very popular, even with those not familiar yet with the list of new names.

So, let’s start one of those introductions right now. Here at the European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Monte Carlo, we sat down for a chat with Steve Enríquez, one of Spain’s EPT commentators and one of the newest members of the red spade team.

PokerStars Blog: Hey Steve, congratulations on the PokerStars announcement. How have things been since the news broke?

Steve Enríquez: It’s a really huge announcement. It’s the dream of every poker player, and it’s come true. When you start playing poker, you always want to represent PokerStars. I’m very happy about it! My Twitter and Instagram are full of around 300 messages from people congratulating me.

For those not yet familiar with you, could you tell us your poker story so far?

I started playing poker in 2010 when I was 18, and I joined the PokerStars School in 2011, so it was very quick. I’ve been playing cash games from the start, but in 2014 I started playing multi-table tournaments. It went well! I won the Spanish Poker Championship in 2016, and I also finished second in a High Roller in Marbella on the Estrellas Poker Tour.

Last year I finished second in the first big tournament online in the new PokerStars client for Spain, France and Portugal. It was the first tournament with €1M guaranteed, and I finished second. It was a great achievement for me.

Not only are you an accomplished player, but you’re also a commentator and broadcaster.

Yeah, I’ve been doing the PokerStars EPT webcasts since 2013. That’s how I started broadcasting and doing television. I look forward to helping PokerStarsSpain on Twitch while also being an ambassador in the tournaments. It’s going to be a lot of fun for me.

EPT MONTE CARLO
LATEST | SCHEDULE | NEED-TO-KNOW | TIMELINE | IMAGE GALLERY | RESULTS

What are your plans, post-Monte Carlo?

My first plan is to play the Spanish Poker Championship next week in San Sebastian, and after that I’ll be at EPT Open Madrid. I’m then going to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker (WSOP), so it’s going to be tricky! The EPT Open Madrid dates fall in the middle of the WSOP, but I think I’ll figure it out. Then I’ll be heading to EPT Barcelona in August as I won the charity event on Tuesday night. I won a €10K package, amazing. I was going to play anyway, but now it’s for free!

Enriquez took down the Right To Play Charity event in Monte Carlo, winning a €10K EPT Barcelona package

As a Spaniard, why do you think people should try and qualify for EPT Open Madrid?

Madrid is an amazing city. You’ll have the best city in the world, in my opinion. Spain is the best place to eat. In summer there aren’t many football games because the summer is over, but you have tons of things to do. Theatre, music, concerts, the city is full of them. You can do a lot of things in Madrid. And of course, all of the pros will be in Las Vegas for the WSOP!

Do you have any tips you picked up in PokerStars School that you could share with any newbies?

Just play poker normally as you would at your house. Don’t change anything about your game. Relax and listen to the dealer all the time. Wait for your turn and don’t be anxious to move. Take the time you need, and do your thing. Some people when they play their first tournament they are nervous and they make mistakes with their raises because they don’t use their voice and they put in only one chip, for example, which is a call instead of a raise.

Finally, what’s it been like having one of your good friends, Ramon Colillas, not only take down the PSPC for more than €5 million but also sign with PokerStars as a Team Pro?

I’ve known Ramon for two years and he’s a really good guy. I wasn’t in the Bahamas sadly because when I finished second in the Marbella High Roller I also lost out on the Platinum Pass. But I messaged Ramon during the event. I think he will be fine and a great Ambassador for PokerStars.

You can win your seat to one of countless PokerStars live events around the world, including EPT Open Madrid. Click here to open an account and get started.

Scott Wellenbach has been the subject of an intense amount of press attention since taking third place in the PCA Main Event in January. But that doesn’t mean he’s gotten used to it yet.

Speaking on a sunny afternoon here in Monaco, Wellenbach was amid his latest flurry of attention — largely my fault. First he faced an on-camera interview in the players’ lounge for our friends in public relations, focused mostly on the topic he’s discussed with numerous publications around North America and Europe: his practice of giving away his poker profits to charity. Next up was a photo shoot in front of Sporting Club Monte-Carlo, where he was asked to tilt his head one way and then another, to look at the camera and then away from it, and to pose himself this way and that.

Scott Wellenbach sits near a tree outside Sporting Club Monte-Carlo, home of EPT Monte Carlo

Both of these diversions are a far cry from his “so-called normal life,” as he puts it a few times during our chat, where he spends much of his time at his computer with dictionaries and online resources to translate ancient Buddhist texts.

That’s something he’s used to. But this new-found attention, not so much. “It’s so novel that I feel not very good at it,” he says of the media spotlight as we walk the grounds near Sporting Club and Monte Carlo Bay, where he’s been staying all week as part of the EPT Main Event package he won on PokerStars. “I feel out of place and wish that I could be more articulate. Sometimes after the interview’s over and I’m falling asleep that night I go, ‘Oh shit, I wish I had said blah-blah-blah.’ I imagine with experience, like anything else, you learn how to do it.”

At least within the context of major live tournament festivals, Wellenbach is far more comfortable at the poker table. However, even that comfort level is a little lower than it was about a decade ago, when the fact that cell phones were mostly used for making calls meant they were banned from most tables.

“I’m not one for imposing restrictions on human beings,” he says. “But if people weren’t allowed to have phones at the table, I would personally enjoy the game more.

“Sometimes you come to these tournaments and you feel like to talk to the person next to you is an intrusion. I mean, no one’s that mean — if you ask them a question they’re usually take off their earphones and pay some attention. But I feel like you shouldn’t have to go that far, to inflict yourself. It’s like we’re gathered together here, and of course the focus is going to be the card game, but while we’re in this card game we could be interacting. I think there would be a lot more of that and it would become much more natural.”

A more natural feel would be welcome in part because Wellenbach finds himself drawn less to online poker than to its live counterpart, which offers the kind of human interactions that he just can’t get on the internet.

Scott Wellenbach in action at the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event

“Somehow online poker doesn’t have the same social dimension,” he says. “One of the things I’ve enjoyed about poker, whether it be one of these tournaments or the local card room, is that you sit down and you’re just talking with whoever ends up next to you from whatever walk of life they may be, and it’s really interesting. I was playing poker [on the U.S. east coast] and there was this guy who had been a professor in ancient Greek philosophy. He gave me a whole course on Plato’s Symposium while we were between hands.”

An online chat box, on the other hand, is a little less philosophical in tone. “Sometimes it can be very aggressive,” he says. “It’s people trying to get under one another’s skin. It’s not just conversation around the table.”

I suggest that outside of home-game-type settings or small-field, high-buy-in tournaments where the players all know each other, people tend not to see their opponents as real people. They feel free to say whatever want in a way they would never feel in person.

Wellenbach agrees. “You know, weird shit happens at a live poker table in a card room, but much less [than online]. Because it is a human being. You know that. You may be an asshole that day, but you’re probably going to be less of an asshole than online.”

Not that online poker is all bad. After all, online qualifiers are the reason Wellenbach is able to play in tournaments like the PCA and EPT Monte Carlo Main Events. In fact, he even suggests that online poker could be the long-term solution to the problem of the massive consumption of resources required for hundreds of people to travel to live tournaments all around the world.

Besides, as long as he keeps winning in those tournaments he’s qualified for online, he can also direct his profits to good causes — just as long as he remains prepared to roll with guys like me putting a recorder in his face.

This is only a short extract of a longer interview with Scott Wellenbach that will appear on PokerStars Blog in the coming weeks.

The 2019 EPT Monte Carlo Main Event has been good for players who qualified for the tournament online. Just ask Ryan Riess.

Ryan Riess is on a roll here in Monte Carlo

The 2013 WSOP Main Event champ is one of six players remaining in the hunt for this year’s title. Should he go on to win, he would become the first world champion to add an EPT Main Event title to his resumé. He would also earn a massive return on his initial investment, given that he earned his seat in a PokerStars online satellite.

Riess was one of 105 players PokerStars qualifiers who played this tournament. Together they represented 11.3 percent of the 922-player field, or roughly one out of every nine participants.

As a group these qualifiers outperformed the rest of the field. In all, 22 of them made the money — that’s 16.2 percent, or roughly one in six, of all those who did so.

Click on an image in the gallery below and move left/right to view.

Benjamin Pollak overcame Koray Aldemir heads-up on the final night of EPT Monte Carlo, walking away with the €705,840 top prize in the €25,000 High Roller, his second major title in the past year.

It was a long haul to the championship. Sergio Aido came into the final day of the tournament with the lead, looking to score a Monte Carlo double when the day began at 12:30 p.m. CET with the stacks situated like so:

The final table of the €25,000 EPT High Roller, with the Main Event final in the background

Two players found their way to the rail during the first level.

Joao Vieira began the day with just 10 big blinds in his stack and made an early move when he picked up A♣4♥. Unfortunately for him Aido woke up with A♠J♥, which held to eliminate Vieira in ninth place.

Daniel Dvoress watches his tournament life slip away

The second elimination was more surprising. Daniel Dvoress sat just three big blinds off the lead when play began, but a rough ride meant he only lasted long enough for a single pay jump.

First Dvoress lost a race with A♠K♠ against Michael Addamo’s 10♥10♣ to double Addamo’s stack over 1.3 million. Left with just 10 blinds, Dvoress then jammed with 9♥8♥ and picked up a call from Laszlo Bujtas. The latter’s J♦J♠ was behind after the turn of the 7♣10♥7♦6♠ board gave Dvoress a ten-high straight, but the J♥ river gave him a full house and knocked Dvoress out in eighth.

The brisk start to the day’s action was no harbinger of things to come. The short stacks doubled as needed for the next three hours, making it look more and more likely that a cooler or a coin-flip situation would strike the next name from the lineup. It turned out to be the latter when EPT Prague Main Event finalist Laurynas Levinskas’s A♥K♣ couldn’t outrun Koray Aldemir’s J♣J♦, sending the Lithuanian to collect his payout in seventh.

Eliminating Levinskas boosted Aldemir’s standing before he took the lead minutes later with a triple-barrel bet that drove Marton Czuczor out of the pot. Then Laszlo Bujtas struck the next knockout blow in nasty fashion. He open-shoved an effective 14-blind stack from the small blind with Q♠9♣ only to see Aido call him with A♥A♣ in the big — and then he caught a queen and a nine on the flop, cracking Aido’s aces to eliminate him in sixth.

That put Aldemir over the 2-million-chip mark for the second time today. Pollak joined him there minutes later when he called an Addamo jam, holding A♦10♣ to Addamo’s A♣6♠. Addamo never got a hint of help from the board and departed in fifth.

Aldemir quickly jumped back in front, though, with a huge call on the river of a dangerous board. Holding A♣7♣ and facing an all-in bet from Bujtas, who had him covered, Aldemir used a time bank card, studied the A♥Q♣K♥3♦8♣ board carefully, and then slid a shot tower of chips forward for the call. His pair of aces was good — Bujtas had bombed the river with nothing more than an unimproved 10♠2♦.

Aldemir stacked up over 4 million with that win. And though Bujtas managed to work his remaining two big blinds into nine, he would fall in fourth minutes later when his A♥K♠ failed to hold against Czuczor’s K♣10♣.

With the table three-handed, the players decided to take a dinner break. Once they returned it only took 15 minutes for an action board to end Czuczor’s tournament. Czuczor saw a free flop from the big blind with K♣7♦ after Aldemir limped the button. Czuczor check-called 80,000 on the Q♣J♥7♣ flop and 350,000 after making two pair on the K♥ turn. When Aldemir shoved the Q♠ river Czuczor thought for a bit before calling, only to see that his kings and sevens were no good. Aldemir’s Q♦J♦ rivered a full house, knocking Czuczor out in third.

Heads-up for the title

Aldemir held the advantage with 4.525 million chips to Pollak’s 2.575 million as heads-up play began on the 40,000/80,000 level. He nearly put Pollak away within just a few minutes, calling with A♥8♦ for top pair when the Frenchman jammed with 10♠4♠ on the turn of a board reading A♠7♠K♦2♥. But Pollak’s flush draw came home on the Q♠ river, moving the two players’ stacks to within six blinds of one another.

Aldemir began pulling away again but found himself in a nasty spot half an hour later when he ran J♠J♦ into Pollak’s A♠A♥. That boosted Pollak into the lead with 5.15 million chips but the game was far from over. Over the next hour Aldemir chipped up until he was even with Pollak again. At that point they talked about a potential deal but didn’t settle on anything concrete. One more hour passed before they found themselves essentially even in chips and agreed on a chop down the middle, leaving €50,000 and the trophy on the table for the winner.

Even with the deal in place, play would continue for nearly another hour. Pollak finally began to wear Aldemir down, though the latter survived a desperate all-in with Q♦J♥, making a straight against Pollak’s K♦Q♠ to prolong the match. Finally Aldemir moved in with K♠10♣ on a king-high board and Pollak called with 9♦9♥. He needed help and he got it with the 9♠ on the river, making a set to close out the tournament.

“You’re a tough one to play against,” Pollak said to Aldemir shortly after his victory. “You gave me a headache for two hours.” This marks Pollak’s second major high roller title in the last year, following up on his EPT Barcelona €50K Single-Day High Roller win in August 2018.

Congratulations to both Pollak and Aldemir for overcoming some of the toughest poker players in the world and sharing in a massive deal at the end of another successful EPT Monte Carlo festival.

“You’re a tough one to play against,” Pollak said to Aldemir

* denotes results of a heads-up deal

The Salle des Etoiles, home of EPT Monte Carlo through the past decade, has hosted some of the European Poker Tour’s most memorable finals. This is a room accustomed to turbulence, where the superstars have prevailed as well as the underdogs, and where champions have been crowned after both marathons and sprints.

Tonight’s EPT Main Event final was an epic, and takes its place as a classic of the form. It was both fast and then very, very slow. It featured a former World Series champion and a couple of happy-go-lucky amateurs, as well as the chance of putting players from China or Hungary into the winner’s enclosure for the first time. It also must have broken at least two records: the first for the length of five-handed play — there were nine hours between the eliminations of the players in sixth and fifth — and the second for the number of double-ups. We lost count of those. And then there was a protracted three-handed deal negotiation, which probably challenged time records as well.

But amid all this sound and fury, there was only one constant: Manig Loeser. And by the time all the playing and the faffing, the faffing and the playing was over, through 273 hands, his crowning as champion felt inevitable. The unflappable 30-year-old from Bad Homburg, Germany, was the one man who had found the straightest path, mostly free from the bumps and the potholes. He built steadily and shrugged off the occasional flesh-wound before he found himself heads-up with China’s latest poker star Wei Huang.

Manig Loeser and his final opponent Wei Huang

Huang began the week happy just to be here, and ended it happier still, draped in his country’s flag. He fell one place short of the title, but there was no shame in that. There were no losers here, only one Loeser.

“I was pretty confident all the way, because I had the chip lead most of the time and I could win a lot of pots,” Loeser said. “But heads up I lost the chip lead and he played super-well, aggressive, so it was quite a fight.”

Loeser’s final haul was €603,777 to Huang’s €552,056. They were the two biggest prizes from a €4.47 million prize pool, built from 922 entries. And that trophy is sitting on a German mantlepiece rather than one in China.

EPT Monte Carlo Main Event final table players (l-r): Wei Huang, Manig Loeser, Nicola Grieco, Luis Medina, Viktor Katzenberger, Ryan Riess.

Luis Medina came back as the odd man out at the six-handed final table. Five players had heaps, but his 16 big blinds were always likely to be under threat fairly soon. The former Team PokerStars Pro from Portugal found pocket sevens on one of the first hands of the day, and somehow managed to avoid going broke against Viktor Katzenberger’s set of jacks. But with the blinds escalating, Medina shoved a handful of times and was eventually caught. Medina’s A♦3♣ lost to Loeser’s 7♠7♥. Medina won €152,800.

The end of the road for Luis Medina

With Medina gone, the dynamic changed again. Little could he have known that there was still more than 14 hours left. Nobody was under immediate threat, but now nobody also needed to fear busting and leaving a micro-stack to ladder. This liberation seemed to appeal most to Katzenberger, who edged into the chip lead thanks to two big hands, but was also picking spots to bully both Riess and the overnight leader Nicola Grieco.

The former pulled off a double-up to remain a threat — his sevens this time, cracking Huang’s aces — but Grieco had entered what seemed to be a terminal tailspin. His habits of making unconventional bets with unexpected hands, and talking readily to his opponents throughout the action, suddenly seemed to catch up with him. He slumped to seven big blinds.

But — and this was a final table full of “buts” — it then became Grieco’s turn to fly back in the right direction. He pulled off a series of double-ups, none more significant than when his aces held against Huang’s kings. Having so nearly hit rock bottom, he bounced back into the near chip-lead, tied only with the steady and emotionless Loeser.

This course of events bought Grieco another eight hours at the final table, but remarkably it earned him not a penny more. The five-handed marathon went on for more than 150 hands, and it was past 11pm local time — and numerous double-ups — that the dam finally swept Grieco away. He had A♠K♥ but Loeser flopped two pair with his 8♣7♥. And Grieco had to make do with the €206,590 he would have received if those aces had not held up.

Nicola Grieco’s ride ends in fifth

Grieco’s departure ramped up the pressure on Riess and Huang in particular. Both had been all-in more than once and survived, but when the two of them went at it, now with short-stacks, there could be only one winner. Riess had Q♣3♠ and Huang had J♦6♦, and the flop of Q♠A♥A♦ favoured only Riess. But the 10♦ turn gave Huang a bunch of outs, and the K♥ was one of them.

That horrific run-out sent Riess spiralling out of the tournament, falling short of his quest to become the first WSOP Main Event winner also to win on the EPT. He played some quite spectacular poker this week, and today wowed the crowds with a correct call with only ten high. (Spin through the complete play-by-play of today for all those details.) But he had to make do with fourth and €265,620.

A fine showing from Ryan Riess

Loeser had the big stack when three-handed play commenced, but Huang came into his own with a delightful all-in river bluff that forced Loeser to fold a straight. They took another tournament break and prepared to return to 45-minute levels, at which point they decided it might be prudent to strike a deal.

The three of them — Loeser, Huang and Katzenberger — were pretty much even in chips and after nearly an hour of posturing and requesting (and denying) “better than ICM” they agreed the following: Huang €552,056, Katzenberger €529,707, Loeser €525,716. The €76,061 left on the side would go to, and decide, the champion.

Deal negotiations in Main Event

The first thing they decided was that it wouldn’t be Katzenberger. He lost a major flip to Loeser when they got it all-in pre-flop (Loeser’s threes held) and Huang polished him off. Katzenberger’s final hand was A♦8♣ to Huang’s A♠K♣ and the poised and calm Hungarian walked quietly away.

Wei Huang rivers a chop against Viktor Katzenberger

The Chinese in the crowd, led by previous EPT runner-up Haoxiang Wang, now unfurled an enormous red national flag and stood anxiously behind it waiting to cheer on their latest challenger for the elusive EPT title. He battled gamely against Loeser during a heads-up battle that ran past 3am, even with the shortened levels.

In the end, it was probably Loeser’s greater experience that won the day: he kept the pots small, except the ones he knew he had a lock on. And in the last, he turned a straight with Q♥8♥ on a board of 9♣J♦5♠10♣ and faded Huang’s three outs. (He had K♠8♣). That was the end of that.

Chinese supporters back their man Wei Huang

“I can’t think straight at all right now,” Loeser told PokerNews, who provided our live updates at this event. “It was a super long final table. It was just really exhausting, they all played so good and put so much pressure on you. It’s just really exhausting to sit there so long and try to make good decisions.”

Loeser has been doing this a long time, and is greatly decorated in poker tournaments across the globe. He now also has an EPT title to add to Germany’s record haul. But the Chinese are inching ever closer.

We’ll be back for the EPT Open in Madrid next month, and then it’s World Series time and then it will be Barcelona again. Thanks for reading. Goodnight!

EPT Monte Carlo Main Event
Date: April 30 – May 4, 2019
Buy-in: €5,300
Entries: 922 (inc. 233 re-entries)
Prize pool: €4,471,700

See full results from EPT Monte Carlo

Here’s everything you need to know from the weekend on PokerStars.

• Brazil’s “tomnelz1″ wins Sunday Million for $110K
• China’s “zzwwzzwwzz” defeats stacked final table in $2,100 HR
• Top 5 High Roller Club results
• Top 5 results from the weekend majors

BRAZIL’S “tomnelz1” wins Sunday Million for $110K

Another Milly title for Brazil

There was a big turnout for the $109 Sunday Million yesterday, with 11,480 total entries creating a $1,148,000 prize pool. That purse was split between the top 2,042 players, and while both Fintan “easywithaces” Hand and Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg both made the cash, they fell in 976th and 1,583rd respectively.

There can only be one winner, and this week the prestige goes to Brazil’s “tomnelz1”. They banked $110,747 for their largest ever cash, in a career that has seen wins in the Bounty Builder $33 ($13K), a Bounty Builder Series title ($12K), and the $11 Mini Sunday Kickoff ($5K).

CHINA’S “zzwwzzwwzz” WINS HRC $2,100 HR

Every week the High Roller Club’s $2,100 Sunday HR proves to be one the toughest tournaments going. Yesterday was no exception, with many of the game’s best in battle.

There were 133 total entries this weekend, and after the bubble burst at 17 players the $266K prize pool was divided amongst them. The big money was at the top of course, and a stacked final table assembled.

Andras “probirs” Nemeth

The top two ranked online tournament players in the world–Niklas “Lena900” Åstedt (#1) and Andras “probirs” Nemeth (#2)–were among them, as were Jonathan “Proudflop” Proudfoot, Ivan “Negriin” Luca, and Joao “Naza114”  Vieira.

Ultimately, though, it was China’s “zzwwzzwwzz” who came out on top, adding $55,834 to his or her bankroll. Sunday was a great day overall for the Chinese player, who also finished fourth in the High Roller Club $530 Omania HR for $6,135, and third in the $215 NLO8 Sunday Supersonic for $3,703.

Here are the full results from the $2,100 HR:

1. “zzwwzzwwzz” (China) – $55,834
2. Jonathan “Proudflop” Proudfoot (UK) – $43,190
3. Andras “probirs” Nemeth (Hungary) – $33,414
4. Niklas “Lena900” Åstedt (Sweden) – $25,849
5. Ivan “Negriin” Luca (Argentina) – $19,996
6. Joao “Naza114”  Vieira (Netherlands) – $15,469

TOP 5 HIGH ROLLER CLUB RESULTS

TOP 5 WEEKEND MAJOR RESULTS

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EPT Monte Carlo is over for another year, and another superstar joins the ranks of established greats as champion of the prestigious Main Event. Manig Loeser, 30, of Bad Homberg, Germany, finally got his hands on an EPT title, prevailing from a final table that continued a tradition of prolonged last-day battles, stretching past 3am local time.

“It was quite a fight,” Loeser said as he got his hands on the trophy and sealed a €603,777 payday. He agreed a heads-up deal with China’s Wei Huang, who took €552,056.

In addition to Loeser’s extraordinary composure, the final will likely be remember mostly for a nine-hour session between the elimination of Luis Medina in sixth and Nicola Greico in fifth. Although such specific records aren’t kept, it seems highly likely that this was the longest period of six-handed play in any major tournament.

There was never much hope for Medina, who had only 16 big blinds coming into the final and was relatively quickly knocked out, but Grieco was the chip leader at the start of the day and might have been optimistic about chances for victory. As it was, he was fortunate not to have been eliminated within about 90 minutes of final table play, shedding chips with alarming haste. He mounted a comeback to keep himself alive, but it was all ultimately in vain. He did still fall in fifth–it’s just that it was nine hours later.

Ryan Riess, the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event champion, narrowly missed out on becoming the first WSOP winner to clinch an EPT title, falling in fourth, but not before his audacious and correct all-in call with ten high had wowed the crowds.

Two other hands brought similar gasps from onlookers: one was a bluff from Huang that got Loeser to fold a straight, and the other was simply the craziest chopped pot an EPT final has ever seen. Check out the video below.

This quick summary doesn’t really do justice to the part played in this final by both Huang and Viktor Katzenberger, both of whom came with a whisker of becoming their countries’ first EPT main event champions. China now has two second places, while Hungary still seeks a winner despite multiple final tables. Both of this week’s challengers showed they had what it takes to go better.

Relive the final table via our complete play-by-play coverage (in association with Poker News). Click through a gallery of Main Event images below, and see the full results on the results page.

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Poker is such a popular game, even those who don’t play it know a lot about it. Or at least they think they do.

Poker may be getting more and more popular, but it’s still a game full of misconceptions.

Sometimes those myths are made worse by popular culture. Portrays of poker in movies and on TV tends to gloss over the specifics of what actually takes place.

So, people who actually play poker complain that “the movies never get it right”. That’s before they give their own account of how the game is played.

Then there are those who haven’t really played poker at all. They also advance opinions about the game, which only have significance over those who have yet to give poker a try.

These “poker myths” are easy to fall for. But it’s only when someone sits down and joins a game that you recognise them as untrue.

Like the five listed below. How many of these do you recognise?

Myth #1: Poker is difficult to learn

Many people feel intimidated by poker. Some who are perfectly willing to gamble in other casino games are afraid to venture over into the poker room. They think the game is simply too hard to grasp.

It’s a reasonable fear.

Unlike other casino games, in poker you compete against other players (and not the house). That alone can be enough to cause hesitation. Especially those who are brand new to the game and who understand they’ll likely be up against opponents with more experience.

Texas hold’em is often described as taking “a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” The fact is, while it probably takes most people more than a minute, learning hand rankings and the order of play isn’t that hard.

Not only is learning poker easier than most realize, learning how to win at poker also isn’t as hard as some think. It only takes a little bit of experience for many player’s skills to improve enough to become competitive, and even profitable.

Myth #2: Poker is all luck

People who don’t play poker sometimes equate it with other casino games like roulette or slots. That is games in which the player has no control over the outcome whatsoever when risking his or her money.

They also believe to win at poker you need to be dealt the strongest hands. But those who have played the game know this isn’t the case at all.

You can win at poker without the best hand. In fact, being dealt the best hand doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. If you play strong hands badly you’ll still often produce a negative result.

The cards you are dealt do affect your chances of success. But a poker player’s strategy also has a lot to do with whether or not a player wins or loses.

Myth #3: Poker is not a gambling game

This is the flip side of the previous myth, often an overstatement of the argument that poker is a “skill game.”

Poker is absolutely a game that over the long term tends to reward the better skilled players. But that doesn’t mean luck doesn’t matter at all. It can matter quite a bit, particularly in a given hand.

Poker tournaments provide the most dramatic example of this truth. For example, when a player at a final table goes all in with the better hand, only to lose and be eliminated.

Getting all in with pocket aces against a lesser pocket pair makes you about a 4-to-1 favorite to win. But that means once every five times your opponent is still going to beat you.

That’s just one example to how poker does involve gambling, even for better players who routinely manage to “get it in good.”

Myth #4: You have to have a good poker face to win

Probably one of the most exaggerated aspects of poker is the idea of “tells”. And players being able (or not able) to hide them at the table.

It’s certainly given a lot of attention in the movies. An eye twitch, or a player’s undue attention to his Oreo cookies (see John Malkovich in Rounders), increases the suspense surrounding a hand.

It’s true that when playing poker in a casino you’re better off not grinning madly every time you have a strong hand. Or trembling uncontrollably when trying to bluff.

But being able to put on a stoic, unrevealing poker face is only a small part of the game. Players often reveal a lot more about the strength of their hands by their betting patterns and via other cues. Tells only very occasionally crop up as significant.

Myth #5: Poker is a game played by outlaws

The historical legacy of poker as a “cheating game” played by “card sharps” still influences how some view poker today. Movies have contributed a lot to this impression as well, where more often than not poker scenes include players with cards up their sleeves.

It was absolutely the case in the 19^th-century. Games aboard steamboats and in the Old West saloons were full of cheaters employing a variety of methods to fleece the unwary. The stories of violence punctuating some of those games have also caused some to associate poker with danger (and criminality).

Modern poker rooms with licenses to operate employ a lot of surveillance to keep the games square. Online poker rooms also take extensive measures to ensure players are safe from cheating. That doesn’t mean players shouldn’t be mindful whenever something seems amiss, but sitting down in a game today is a lot different from what was the case back during the game’s early decades.

Today poker is a game played by all sorts of people at a wide variety of stakes. Certain myths about the game do persist. They highlight poker’s difficulty, risk, or “outlaw” status. But such ideas generally have more to do with the romance of poker than its reality.

When Dana White was asked when fans would see women compete in the Octagon back in 2011, the usually talkative UFC president responded with a single word.

“Never.”

The answer was not out of step with White’s previous position on the matter of women in the UFC. White had long resisted the idea. Even as women competed in other major promotions, creating stars like Gina Carano.

The duration of “never” is flexible for White, however. A women’s fight would not only happen in the UFC in 2013, it would headline UFC 157.

The Ronda Rousey show

White’s change of heart was spurred on by one woman. She was making her professional debut at about the same time White was trying to shut the cage door on the idea of women fighting.

Her name was Ronda Rousey.

Rousey, a former Olympic bronze medalist, had racked up a 6-0 MMA record in only 7 minutes 39 seconds of fight time. She was tossing opponents to the mat and armbarring them with a ferocity not previously seen in MMA. And she was marketable.

That marketability led White to change his tune. After the UFC purchased Strikeforce, Rousey was in a main event slot against Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. White made it clear the progressive step was about Rousey, and Rousey alone.

“I’m putting my toe in the water, and I’m checking it out,” White told MMAFighting. There’s no doubt, for people who say, ‘Oh, this is the Ronda Rousey show,’ [expletive] right it is. You’re absolutely right. I’m not trying to shy away from that and say, ‘Oh no, we’re getting into women’s MMA.’ This is the Ronda Rousey Show.”

White would also make it clear the experiment could have been a temporary one.

“I don’t know how long this is going to last,” he said. “This could last a year. This could be forever. The 135-pound division could fill up with tons of talent, and we could have tons of great fights. I can’t honestly sit here and predict what’s going to happen, but don’t kid yourself, this is absolutely the only reason this is happening is because of Ronda Rousey.”

Rousey would go on to defend her UFC bantamweight championship — which she received prior to her UFC debut for her status as Strikeforce champion — by submitting Carmouche with a first-round armbar.

The fight was so well received, and Rousey such an easy mainstream star, that White’s prior protestations and hesitation, almost immediately became a thing of the past.

Rousey continued to be central to the cause of women in the Octagon. She served as a coach opposite rival Miesha Tate on UFC reality show The Ultimate Fighter, before violently destroying her arm in a UFC 168 bout.

While running through opposition, she starred in Hollywood films, picked up corporate partnerships, hosted Saturday Night Live, and made herself at home on talk show couches across the world.

Her success also led many to wonder how much of the men’s 135-pound division she could beat. As well as odd side conversations on a hypothetical bout with boxing megastar Floyd Mayweather.

Her starpower helped the UFC find the faith to create more women’s divisions. It opened up the 115-pound flyweight division in 2014, before the 125 and 145-pound divisions opened in 2017.

Almost every champion falls, however, and Rousey fell hard.

In November 2015, a Holly Holm head kick left Rousey unconscious at UFC 193, ending her 12-fight winning streak. She would fade from the public eye before reentering the Octagon in December 2016 to face new champion Amanda Nunes at UFC 207.

Nunes would take only 48 seconds to defeat Rousey with strikes, and send Rousey into retirement from mixed martial arts.

The show goes on

While Holm was knocking Rousey out at UFC 193, Joanna Jedrzejczyk was continuing to build her star.

The then strawweight champion fought in the co-main event of the card, putting on another entertaining performance. Fans soon began gravitating toward her charming personality and violent striking style.

Cris Cyborg, a former Strikeforce and Invicta FC star, was named one of the women that fans wanted to see challenge Rousey.

Considered the most dangerous striker in any women’s division, Cyborg would not make her Octagon debut until May 2016 and UFC 198. She would go on to win the featherweight (145-pound) championship at UFC 214.

Nunes, the woman who disposed of Rousey in less than a minute, had won the 135-pound title from Tate, then knocked out Rousey, and picked up two more title defenses. That was before deciding to jump up a weight class and take on Cyborg this past December.

Rose Namajunas

Again, it took Nunes less than a minute to knock out a woman considered to be among — if not the — best in the world, finishing Cyborg to become a two-division champion. Cyborg had been on a 20-fight unbeaten streak. Nunes also became notable as the UFC’s first openly gay champion.

Jedrzejczyk’s run of dominance would come to a sudden end in the attempted sixth defense of her strawweight title. That was when she faced off with Rose Namajunas, a former contestant on The Ultimate Fighter, who’d lost in the show’s final bout to crown the inaugural champion of the division.

Namajunas scored a huge first round upset over Jedrzejczyk in their bout at UFC 217. Then proved it was no fluke with a unanimous decision victory in their rematch at UFC 223.

Still closing the show

The sport has evolved so much since Dana White’s proclamation that women would “never” fight in the UFC. But nowhere is that growth more apparent than in the female divisions.

What was once the “Ronda Rousey show” has become multiple divisions featuring depth, talent and stars.

This weekend, Namajunas will step back into the Octagon and defend her championship for the first time since that April 2018 win over Jedrzejczyk. She faces off with Jessica Andrade in the main event of UFC 237.

Two women in the strawweight division, both talented and accomplished, will headline a major event in Brazil. They’ll headline the show with future hall of famers such as Anderson Silva, Jose Aldo and B.J. Penn below them on the card.

And it’s happening because they’re the rightful fighters to be in the main event.

Women in the Octagon have gone from “never” to owning the cage and closing the show.

It’s one of the best times of the year at PokerStars: SCOOP is right around the corner.

With more than $115 million in guaranteed prize money, including a $1 million guaranteed event every day of the schedule and $11.5 million guaranteed across three Main Events, SCOOP 2019 is the biggest tournament series in PokerStars history. The only real problem is figuring out how to maximize your ability to take the biggest share of that money for yourself.

That’s where PokerStars School comes in. From free SCOOP satellite tickets and guides to help you plan your SCOOP schedule, to strategy tips to help you adjust to the deep structures better than your opponents, PokerStars School is full of promotions and good advice to take you from zero to SCOOP in no time flat.

Free SCOOP tickets to win in PokerStars School satellites

Get ready to win your share of $115 million in guaranteed prize money

PokerStars School is running four satellites over the next two weeks that will award a total of 90 free SCOOP tickets between them. All you need to enter is a School SCOOP EN Ticket, and there are plenty of ways to get one.

Click through to the PokerStars School SCOOP page and click on the button to get one free School Pass ticket. If you also make your first real-money deposit on PokerStars you’ll receive three more School SCOOP tickets, plus five School EN tickets and 10 Masters League EN tickets. For another free School SCOOP ticket, you can leave a comment at the bottom of the page telling what SCOOP tournament you’d like to play and why.

Once you have your tickets in hand, use them to play in these freerolls with SCOOP tickets for the top finishers:

SCOOP Planning, Bankroll, and Mindset

Being prepared means bigger stacks when the big money is on the line

With dozens of events being contested over two weeks in May, SCOOP presents the average player with a raft of challenges when it comes to planning, bankroll management, and maintaining a winning mindset. Thinking carefully about your own strengths and bankroll considerations before you ever register for a single SCOOP event can make a massive difference in your results.

The best way to tackle these challenges is to make like a Boy Scout and be prepared. And the best way to be prepared is to look over Pete Clarke’s checklist. By training yourself to think in a long-term, disciplined manner before the start of a slower SCOOP event, you’ll find an edge over those who are still in turbo mode.

Gearing up for SCOOP

SCOOP tournaments aren’t like the tournaments you play the rest of the year. They take multiple days to play out, the fields are large, and the stacks remain deep much longer than most players are used to. Preparing for these variations can be the difference between a decent cash and a deep run with potentially life-changing money up for grabs.

Good thing, then, that Pete Clarke is full of great advice on how to make the most of SCOOP’s unique nature. He tells you about the importance of scoping out the table before taking risks, gathering reads on your opponents, and three-betting aggressively with a chip advantage — among other topics — in Gearing Up For SCOOP: General Tournament Strategy.

How the pros prepare for SCOOP

One of the best ways to learn the game of poker is to watch the members of Team PokerStars play live on Twitch. It stands to reason, then, that one of the best ways to learn about preparing for a massive tournament series like SCOOP is to see how the pros get ready. Lucky for you that PokerStars School caught up with four members of Team Pro — Fintan “Easywithaces” Hand, Felix “Xflixx” Schneiders, Ben “Spraggy” Spragg, and Lex “L. Veldhuis” Veldhuis — to see how they get ready for SCOOP.

Felix, Fintan, Spraggy, and Lex

This piece has everything from what events they’re planning to play and how they structure their schedules during the series, to their expectations heading into the two-week grind and what advice they have for PokerStars School members playing SCOOP for the first time. It’s the kind of perspective you can only get from players who have done it all before.

Check it all out in How Pros Prepare For SCOOP.

10 SCOOP Tournaments you should play

Be sure to choose the best tourneys for your skill set & bankroll

Now that you’ve checked out all the advice on offer and prepared yourself mentally for the unique challenges of SCOOP, it’s time to plan out which events you’re going to play.

From the perspective of players with modest bankrolls, one of the best things about SCOOP is how many affordable and high-value events there are on the schedule. This year a number of tournaments with buy-ins as low as $5.50 and $11 offer the chance to claim a share of prize pools worth anywhere between $100,000 and $150,000. This is the kind of value you just don’t find every day of the week and it’s a big part of what makes SCOOP so special.

Check out 10 SCOOP Tournaments You Should Play for the rundown on some of the best value on this year’s schedule.

Other new PokerStars School content you might enjoy

• Article: 5 Poker Players Types Who Under-Achieve – for upping your mental game with the big money on the line
• Strategy: 5 Tips for Mastering Pot Control – for those sticky situations against tricky opponents
• Video: Heads-Up Strategy: An Introduction – for when there’s only one opponent between you and the title
• Winners Wall: Nick Binks a Big Spin! – for perspective on how big wins come along
• Question of the Week: What are your top 3 tips for winning big poker tournaments? – for the community perspective on what it takes to win a huge tourney

Open a PokerStars account today and start learning from PokerStars School. Click here to get started, and then click here to register for PokerStars School.

Winter came and winter fell. We’re now left with a dream of spring, and a battle that kicks off this Sunday.

No, we’re not talking about S8E5 of Game of Thrones and the impending battle of King’s Landing, which coincidentally also runs on Sunday night. Sorry about that.

We are, of course, referring to one of the most exciting times in the online poker calendar: the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) 2019.

What it lacks in dragons, SCOOP makes up for with 67 events spread across three buy-in tiers (low, medium, and high), a record $75 million in guaranteed prize pools, and a minimum of $1 million guaranteed every day throughout the series.

Whatever your game of choice, SCOOP has it covered with tournament variants in no-limit hold’em (NLHE), pot-limit Omaha (PLO), 2-7 single draw, win the button, 5-card PLO, and the ever-popular progressive knock-out (PKO) events.

THE NIGHT’S WATCH

As there are so many events at varying buy-ins, picking out only five “players to watch” ultimately became a fruitless endeavour.

Instead, we’ve picked out five players for the medium and high buy-in tiers, plus a couple for those who might specialise in non-NLHE events too.

They’ll no doubt all be in action right from the off on Sunday, and who knows? You might even find yourself sat next to one of them throughout SCOOP (although, for your sake, we hope not).

Let’s kick things off with the Medium tier.

(All player rankings are provided by PocketFives.com)

CHARLIE “JIZOINT” COMBES

Combes is currently ranked 17th in the UK, according to PocketFives.com

If you’re looking for some inspiration prior to this SCOOP, check out the story of legendary British pro Charlie “JIZOINT” Combes. In our interview, Combes told us that after a year away from the game he felt that he had fallen far behind the curve. However, upon undertaking a new coaching and study regime, he’s finding his form once again.

In March of this year, Combes’ comeback was cemented with a Sunday Million chop for $83K. Expect to see “JIZOINT” putting in a good grind over the next couple of weeks.

FINTAN “easywithaces” HAND

The moment Fintan Hand won the $530 Bounty Builder

No Twitch streamer has been chalking up big results quite as consistently as Fintan “easywithaces” Hand in recent months. He boasts victories in everything from the $55 Sunday Marathon to two recent wins in the $530 Bounty Builder for a combined $61K.

Plus, Hand is one of the guys you can actually watch, as the PokerStars Ambassador will be streaming all of his play live on Twitch.

MORE ABOUT FINTAN HAND
INTERVIEW | $530 BOUNTY BUILDER WIN | $109 BATTLE ROYALE WIN |
$44 BOUNTY BUILDER WIN

CONOR “1_conor_b_1” BERESFORD

Connor “1_conor_b_1” Beresford: Flying high in the online rankings

Fresh from his deep run in the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event last week, Conor “1_conor_b_1” Beresford returned to the online felt with a vengeance, finishing second in the $109 Sunday Kickoff last week for $9,703, and placing seventh in the High Roller Club’s $1,050 Sunday Warm-up on the same day for $9,300.

Beresford, who is currently ranked 15th in the world, already has a big SCOOP title to his name, having taken down a $2,100 4-max event in 2016 for $171K. He’s a force to be reckoned with in any buy-in he chooses to play.

DAN “NukeTheFish” WILSON

Ireland’s Dan “NukeTheFish” Wilson has long been a force at the medium to high buy-in PokerStars schedule and has more recently been seen crushing in the High Roller Club too.

This past Saturday he took down the High Roller Club’s $530 Daily Supersonic for $15,904. He doesn’t have a SCOOP title yet, but we think this could be his year to capture a trophy.

ARTEM “veeea” VEZHENKOV

Three-time Sunday Million winner Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov might have a better résumé than anyone when it comes to that buy-in level. He also has a SCOOP title, a WCOOP title, two Super Tuesday titles, and just about everything else going too.

Could “veeea” be victorious in 2019? Our guess is yes.

TAKING YOU HIGHER

We’re now moving into High Stakes territory…

NIKLAS “Lena900” ÅSTEDT

You can’t make a list of players to watch without featuring the world No 1, can you?

Niklas “Lena900” Åstedt

Niklas “Lena900” Åstedt is a crusher of the highest calibre, as anyone who plays the high stakes tournaments will tell you.

Åstedt took down two SCOOP titles last year: one in a $530 re-buy event, and another in a no-limit Omaha 8 event showing he’s no one-trick pony.

There’s not a lot we can say about this man other than this: he’s amazing. Watch him.

LEX VELDHUIS

We could say the same for Lex Veldhuis, as he’ll actually be streaming his cards-up high stakes SCOOP schedule live on his Twitch channel.

Lex Veldhuis: watch him live during SCOOP

Veldhuis told Joe Ingram last week that he’ll be taking this week off before SCOOP to chill out, study, and prepare for the grind. That makes us confident that you’ll see Veldhuis make some deep runs.

He’s enjoyed some nice results of late, including a win in the Sunday Warm-up for $34K. We’ll certainly be watching the most popular poker in the world throughout SCOOP. Will you?

ROMAN “RomeOpro” ROMANOVSKY

It seems like not a week goes by where we don’t write about a big High Roller Club score for this guy.

Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky

Currently ranked fifth in the world, Ukraine’s Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky has been crushing of late, and he has a SCOOP CV that anyone would be proud of.

Last year he not only took down two events for a combined $262K, he also finished second in the $25K High Roller for a massive $442K payday.

We’re pretty sure we’ll be writing about him a lot over the next couple of weeks too.

ANDRAS “probirs” NEMETH

You might have seen Andras “probirs” Nemeth on live streams recently, as the Hungarian pro has taken to playing more live Super High Roller events. What you might not have known is that he’s also ranked No 2 in the world online, and has long been considered one of the best on the virtual tournament felt.

Andras “probirs” Nemeth

Nemeth has three SCOOP titles already (2015, 2017, and 2018). The one he won last year was the same $25K that “RomeOpro” finished second in, and for his win Nemeth banked $576K.

We’d be shocked if we don’t see Nemeth put up big results this year.

“girafganger7”

The Belgian player has a WCOOP title ($196K – 2017) and two Turbo Series titles (2019 and 2017 for a combined $123K) already under his belt, plus plenty of close calls in SCOOP events. In 2017, “girafganger7” finished second in the $215 11th anniversary Sunday Million for $292K, so he knows a thing or two about navigating his way through those huge medium-to-high buy-in fields.

A former worldwide No 1 ranked player, he’s currently ranked fourth. Will this SCOOP be where “girafganger7” makes the push back to the top spot?

OUTSIDE OF NLHE

Shaun Deeb

SHAUN “shaundeeb” DEEB

He may only ever play online poker during the SCOOP and WCOOP, but when he does, Shaun Deeb gets results.

We spoke to him last year before WCOOP, where he retold the now infamous story of him missing the birth of his son to capture another title.

Deeb’s SCOOP titles came in PLO8 and HORSE, while he has WCOOP titles in just about every game going.

If he puts in a big grind this year, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the winner’s list.

SAMI “LarsLuzak” KELOPURO

Finland’s Sami “LarsLuzak” Kelopuro is great at just about every game, and is currently ranked #9 in the world.

He took down the $10K SCOOP NLHE Main Event in 2011 for $735K, and his other SCOOP win came in a NLHE event too. But he has so many close calls in PLO and mixed game events (including a runner-up WCOOP finish in the $10K eight-game last year) that we’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on him in 2019.

That’s it.

Good luck with your own grinds this SCOOP, which kicks off on PokerStars this Sunday. And remember, if you bust everything, there’s always Game of Thrones on TV.

And what do we say to the Gods of poker?

Not today.

Unless they ask if you’d like to win a SCOOP title. In that case, answer: “Yes please.”

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