Alessandro De Fenza Wins Italian Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event for €105,600

April 14, 2014

Chad Holloway PR & Media Manager

Prior to the European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event, the Italian Poker Tour (IPT) kicked off their €700 buy-in Main Event, which attracted 1,124 players and created a prize pool of €763,196. That was distributed to the top 167 players, with over €100,000 reserved for the eventual winner. In the end, and thanks to a three-handed deal, it was Italy's Alessandro De Fenza that walked away with the trophy and a €105,600 first-place prize.

Place	Player	Country	Chip Count
1st	Alessandro De Fenza	Italy	€105,600*
2nd	Marcello Miniucchi	Italy	€95,600*
3rd	Jae Kyung Sim	Korea	€75,000*
4th	Alex Longobardi	Italy	€43,200
5th	Alex Norden	Sweden	€32,900
6th	Adel Kabbani	France	€24,200
7th	Alessandro Borsa	Italy	€18,300
8th	Fabio Scepi	Italy	€13,000

_{*Denotes three-handed deal}

Among those who cashed were Tam Truong (166th - €1,220), Max Pescatori (160th - €1,220), Sergio Aido (158th - €1,220), Marcin Horecki (150th - €1,220), Alex Kravchenko (135th - €1,345), Casey Kastle (129th - €1,345), Vitaly Lunkin (107th - €1,500), Alessandro Basile (78th - €1,660), Andrea Dato (59th - €1,980), Kitty Kuo (34th - €2,800), Ben Yu (27th - €3,815), Pratik Ghatge (22nd - €4,550), and Franco Berlingieri (10th - €8,480).

UKIPT Marbella champion Ludovic Geilich, who won the PokerStars Super Tuesday last week for a career best online cash of $101,325 and was fourth at EPT London, narrowly missed the final table, finishing 11th for €8,480.

Alessandro De Fenza Wins Italian Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event for €105,600 101 — Marcello Miniucchi

When the final nine, who were guaranteed at least €13,000, returned for the final day of play on Monday, Marcello Miniucchi was the chip leader; however, he faced some stiff competition including APPT Cebu champion Jae Kyung Sim, 2012 Swedish Champion Alexander Norden, World Poker Tour Venice runner-up Alex Longobardi, and Niccolo Ceccarelli, who had already won an event at the EPT Sanremo Poker Festival when he beat a 75-strong field to take down the €200 NL Turbo (Unlimited RB/AO) for €8,620.

According to the PokerStars Blog, the final three players struck a deal and then continued to play in out. In Level 35 (150,000/300,000/40,000), Sim got his stack all in holding the A♥J♣ and was ahead of the K♥4♣ of Miniucchi. Unfortunately for Sim, the 4♥ appeared on the board to send him to the rail in third place.

Heads-up play didn't last long, and that's because Miniucchi found QxQx only to run it into the AxAx of De Fenza. A raising war saw the former get his stack all in, and then the board ran out clean to lock up the win for De Fenza.

As previously mentioned, the IPT Main Event attracted 1,124 entries over three accumulator start days. There were 609 unique players with Italians accounting for more than half (51% with 308 players) that field. In total, players from 49 countries took part.