Main Event
Day 5 Started
2011 PokerStars.com EPT Tallinn
Main Event
Day: 5
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2011 PokerStars.com EPT Tallinn
Buy-in
€4,000
Prize Pool
€1,071,600
Entries
282
Level
25
Blinds
15,000 / 30,000
Ante
4,000
Seat 8: Ronny Kaiser, 21, Bern, Switzerland - 2,394,000
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Kaiser started playing poker online when he was 18, focusing on Multi-Table Tournaments and PLO cash games, and doing well from the start. He built up a big bankroll and then switched his attention to live Omaha cash games. Kaiser is now considered one of the biggest Omaha cash game players in Europe and is a regular at the €100/€200 games in Austrian casinos alongside fellow Swiss pro Anton Allemann and Austrian Nikolaus Jedlicka (whose brother Stefan bust the EPT Tallinn Main Event in 22nd place). He is also close friends with German pro Benny Spindler and the two attend numerous EPTs together. Kaiser has several notable cashes at European live events including 20th place at EPT6 San Remo for € 30,000.
Seat 7: Erlend "Sir_Winalot9" Melsom, 23, Arendal, Norway – PokerStars qualifier - 326,000
The only life that Erlend Melsom understands is the poker life. The 23-year old Norwegian, who won his seat to Tallinn via PokerStars’ Steps satellites, has been playing poker ever since he left school. He has been playing live, on and off, since he began his career but this will be his only significant live cash to date and he hasn’t played an EPT for over two years. Melsom plays most of his poker online – screen name"Sir_Winalot9" – taking part in both NLHE and PLO tournaments. One of Melsom's biggest achievements to date was snagging a SCOOP bracelet in the high-stakes version of event #11 ($2,100 PLO Heads-Up) last May. Overall, he has won over $1 million playing online and the vast majority of that cash has come from playing on PokerStars.
Seat 6: Sami Kelopuro, 24, Helsinki, Finland - 1,325,000
Over the past five years, Sami Kelopuro has built a reputation as one of the most fearless high-stakes online cash players, featuring regularly at all the biggest games on the net. In recent months he has also been focusing on his tournament game, with startling results. Kelopuro cashed in 12th at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo last April at the start of a huge hot streak. He won the SCOOP Main Event on PokerStars in May for more than half a million dollars, then went to Vegas and finished runner up in the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha championship event at the World Series, earning another $500,000. His six registered live cashes, including 12th at EPT San Remo on season six, are all for more than $30,000. This is his first EPT final table.
Seat 5: Arvi Vainionkulma, 21, Helsinki, Finland - 258,000
Finnish Economics student Arvi Vainionkulma is heading for the biggest live cash of his career in Tallinn - and is already up €4,250 after winning the Last Longer contest run by Skrill, the Official Payment Provider Sponsor of EPT Season 8. Prior to EPT Tallinn, Vainionkulma’s biggest win in a live event was € 8,192 for making the final table of the €2k Midnight Sun tourney in Helsinki in June. He also final-tabled a €1k side event at the Irish Open in April. He says he’s happy to have made the final but disappointed that he’s now the short-stack after losing a giant pot to Grzegorz Cichocki in the penultimate hand of the day.
Seat 4: Stuart Fox, 32, Birmingham, UK – PokerStars qualifier - 514,000
Fox is a well-known poker professional in his home country and has been playing for eight years. Away from the live tournament circuit, he plays heads-up NLHE cash games and tournaments online. He says EPT Tallinn has been a real grind - with his stack always seemingly hovering between ten and twenty big blinds. He doesn’t have any specific poker goals except to earn as much money as possible and keep his bankroll at a level where he can continue to play comfortably.
Away from the tables, Fox likes to unwind by playing golf. He will be supported by his friend Billy tomorrow. Billy doesn’t play poker himself and was supposed to be flying home tomorrow but has taken Monday off work and booked a new flight so he can be here for tomorrow’s final table.
Seat 3: Jani Sointula, Finland - 769,000
Sointula is a familiar figure on the world poker circuit, and not just for his mane of blond hair that stretches down his back (which he has been growing since 2003), but for a tournament resume going back more than eight years, with big results from around the world.
Tallinn is a poignant venue for Sointula, whose first cash, and first tournament win, was here in 2003, the year he took up the game. Back then Sointula won the Baltic Open Championship, a title worth €3,240. Now he stands poised for a first prize of €275,000.
A little more than a year later, after playing the first ever EPT in Barcelona, Sointula made his breakthrough, winning the Monte Carlo Millions, with more results following. He finished runner-up in the 2006 WPT Paris main event and last season came second in the EPT London High Roller. To date he has nearly $1.8 million in live tournament winnings.
This is Sointula’s first EPT main event final, something he is proud to have achieved after four days of solid play. “For the first three days I didn’t lose any pots, my stack growing all the time,” said Sointula. “I made a bad all-in today against Jeff [Sarwer] but if I hit the flop, I hit it.”
Seat 2: Raigo "hotcocacola" Aasmaa, 23, Tartu, Estonia - 904,000
Former IT consultant Aasmaa first started playing poker online in 2008 and then live tournaments the following summer. He turned pro in December 2009 and became an Olympic Casino Online Pro a few months later. At live events, he likes playing No Limit Hold’em and PLO and favours multi-table deep stack events. Online he specialises in low-stakes PLO heads-up cash games. Making the EPT Tallinn final table is by far his best live cash; prior to now, his biggest result was taking down the Latvian leg of the Baltic Holdem series in Riga last February for €7,200. He was runner-up in the Estonian Championship of Online Poker Main Event last November and third in the Estonian Poker Championship, a live tournament which took place at Olympic Casino in Tallinn last January
Seat 1: Grzegorz Cichocki, 38, Jedlina near Wroclaw, Poland - 2,059,000
Cichocki has loved card games since childhood but only took up poker in 2005 after seeing it on television. He is now a full-time pro playing live No Limit Hold’em tournaments around Europe. He has played numerous EPTs but this is by far his best live result to date. His best cash before now was runner-up in a €700 side event at the first EPT San Remo in Season 4 but he also went deep at EPT Vilamoura last season and cashed in the EPT Grand Final in Madrid in May for €25,000. He is getting a lot of support going into the final table from the large Polish contingent at EPT Tallinn.
EPT Tallinn Main Event Final Table All Set
The final table of the EPT Tallinn Main Event is all set and it looks like it could be one of the most exciting EPT final tables of all time.
Ronny Kaiser is the man to catch, he goes into battle armed with 2,394,000 chips. Hot on his heels though is Grzegorz Cichocki a Polish professional player who with 2,059,000 chips is the only other player to have passed the 2,000,000 chip mark.
Also in with a chance of European Poker Tour glory is the fearless Sami "LarsLuzak" Kelopuro, local player Raigo Aasmaa and Jani Sointula. At the lower end of the chip counts but only a double up away from being back in contention are Britain's Stuart Fox, Erlend "Sir_Winalot9" Melsom and Arvi Vainionkulma.
We will be starting Level 23, which means blinds will be 10,000/20,000/3,000a and the Kaiser will start with the button. The players are just having their photographs taken so we are running a tad late but join us shortly 1200 local time for all the action as it unfolds.