Pokerfarm at EPT Madrid

May 13, 2011, Posted by Pokerfarm

Pokerfarm at the EPT Grand Final

Another year and nearly another season of EPTs done and dusted. That is, apart from the big one. The EPT grand final moved from its spiritual home in Monte Carlo to the Spanish capital of Madrid for 2011's flagship event. Unsurprisingly numbers were down from last year due to the ongoing black cloud hanging over poker in the US, but 686 players stumped up the €10,000 buy-in and a prizepool of €6,860,000 meant that the winner would be walking away with a not too shabby €1,500,00 in their pocket.

 

High Roller

The €25k high roller tournament attracted 58 entries in total, bringing the prizepool to € 1,435,500 and a chunky €525,000 to the winner. The Pokerfarm was represented by Luke Schwartz and James Bord in this one, with James rocking up fashionably late, stepping off his private jet accompanied by Tom Dwan a mere 7 hours late! Ah the lifestyle of the rich and famous...

   Bordy - Just a casual 7 hrs late for the €25k tourney

Both Luke and James made it through to day 2 with 82,000 and 38,000 respectively. James’s day didn’t last too long, getting it allin on a K♦ Q♥ X flop with KJ against Petter Jetten’s set of queens. Luke fared slightly better, tangling with Durrr and engaging in some amusing table chat throughout the day. He got unlucky against Juha Helppi running K3 into A3 on a 5♠6♥3♦3♣2♠ board and finally busted with pocket tens allin preflop versus Philipp Gruissem’s QQ.

PokerStars pro Elky went on to win a tough final table, recording his 2^nd EPT high roller win to go with his PCA win. It’s fair to say that Elky is simply not human. Not only did he win the high roller but yesterday he also bagged the high roller €10k turbo event!

Elky wins (again)

Heads up

The €5k heads up event pulled up 32 entries, with James Akenhead the only Pokerfarm player to cash, coming a respectable 4^th but losing out to Brian ‘stinger88’ Hastings. He picked up €19,500 for his troubles.

Main Event

Team Pokerfarm had mixed fortunes in the main event, with James Bord, James Akenhead, Bobby Bellande, Ben Vinson, Ramsey Ajram and Luke Schwartz all taking part.

Bobby Bellande had a tough table to start with and ended up getting it allin with AK v A8 on an AT7 board against the table loon in a 3bet pot. Suffice to say the 8 rivered and JRB was on his way back to the States. To say he was unhappy is an understatement!

Bobby Bellande - if looks could kill

Luke Schwartz never really managed to get going, and frankly nor did any of the others, each running bad and failing to make day 2. It was down to WSOPE champ James Bord to fly the flag for The Pokerfarm, riding out a rollercoaster day which had him up with the chip leaders at one point. On the very last hand of the day James managed to 3 barrel a good chunk of his stack away against a determined Italian who thought his pair of 3’s was good on a KJ925 board for his whole stack. The 3’s were good. Hero call or clown call, you decide, but it meant JB was back in the pack.

On day 2 James returned with 40,000 in chips and managed to chip up to 100k without much fuss. From here he went from strength to strength, reaching 200k but bluffing off another chunk to a calling station. This setback lost him more than half of his stack but he regrouped and grinded back to get through day 2 on 94,000 chips and in the money.

104 players returned for day 3 and early on James looked primed for a huge double up but the poker gods decided to dump on him from a great height. This was the report taken from Pokernews:

‘James Bord opened to 11,500 preflop and Daniel Weinman made it 24,500 from the cutoff.

"All in," said Bord. Weiman got a count which was just over the 100,000 mark before he made the call.

Bord: AK
Weinman: AQ

There was a queen on the flop and Bord got out of his seat before the turn was even dealt, leaning on the back his chair he dispassionately waited for the coup de grâce which came on the river’.

Other notables going deep in the main event included Brazilian Alex Gomes(7^th), Brit Simon Higgins(11^th), Viktor Ramdin(23^rd) and Surinder Sunar(29^th).

Relative unknown Venezuelan Ivan Freitez-Rosales secured his biggest ever poker payday, running over the final table to snag the top prize and title of EPT Grand Final main event champion.

Ivan Freitez - €1.5mil will buy you a few pints in Venezuela

So that’s it from Madrid – Be sure to check out our videos section over the next week as we’ll be uploading some footage shortly. For now there will be a brief hiatus until we hit Vegas for the small matter of the WSOP.