Italy’s Carlo Savinelli Wins High Roller Event at the Winamax Poker Tour

February 27, 2015

Giovanni Angioni Contributor

After finishing runner-up at the World Poker Tour National (WPTN) Main Event at the Cercle Clicy-Montmartre (CCM) in Paris in December, Italy's Carlo Savinelli kept his momentum going on Thursday when he left the very same poker room as the winner of the Winamax Poker Tour (WiPT) high roller event for $61,800.

The €1,520 WiPT High Roller event attracted a field of 176 players to the CCM — Paris' only live poker room after the closure of the Aviation Club the France. Among the big names that took part in the event were Team Winamax Pro and mother-to-be Gaëlle Baumann, who closed with a ninth-place finish for a €7,100 prize.

Savinelli's victory followed up a ninth-place finish at the European Poker Tour Main Event in Deauville for $52,330 on Feb. 5, and a fifth-place finish at the WPTN High Roller event in Brussels for $14,367 on Feb. 21. It's been quite a month for the Italian pro.

Ranking 22nd on Italy's all-time money list with live tournament earnings of $967,010 (source: HendonMob), Savinelli also won an Italian Poker Open Main Event for $ 332,290, and cashed close to $50,000 at the World Series of Poker between 2012 and 2013.

"My game has evolved, as I managed to turn some of my weaknesses into my strengths," Savinelli said in an interview to Italy's sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport right before his success in Paris.

With a degree in law and a future that was supposed to see him to become a judge rather than a professional poker player, Savinelli admitted that he was able to step up his game once he decided to fully focus on the cards and put everything else on hold for a while.

"For about six years I, have kept my feet in different shoes," Savinelli explained. "But, once I finished law school I made a choice - and that's why 14 months ago I decided that it was finally time to do only one thing and to try to do that as best as I could."

The outcomes of this choice, according to Savinelli's, have been quite satisfactory. During the last 14 months, he cashed in 14 different events, putting together prizes of $597,291, which is more than what he managed to earn from live tournament poker between 2008 and the end of 2013.

"I believed in my dreams, I have been brave and I have been rewarded for my choice, seen that in a little more than a year I reached the final table in nearly all the circuits I have played."

Here's the official payouts from the 2015 WiPT High Roller final table:

Place	Player	Prize
1	Carlo Savinelli	€55,000
2	Frederic Coranson	€40,000
3	Jean-Michel Texier	€26,500
4	Lianmin Bai	€19,500
5	Benjamin Souriau	€14,600
6	Jean-Marc Achiary	€11,600
7	Eric Souvay	€9,600
8	Steven Coutereel	€8,300
9	Gaëlle Baumann	€7,100