Mikolaj Zawadzki Wins EPT Barcelona €1,650 Mystery Bounty (€95,418)

August 21, 2022

The latest champion at the PokerStars and Barcelona©Casino European Poker Tour has been crowned, with Mikolaj Zawadzki taking down the €1,650 Mystery Bounty after defeating a field of 666 entrants to take the €95,418 grand prize.

He defeated Tobias Peters heads-up to secure the biggest live cash of his career.

PokerNews caught up with Zawadzki after his win to talk about his poker career. Zawadzki was joined by his rail which included Mateusz Moolhuizen who cheered him on throughout the final stages of the final table. Zawadzki said this is his biggest live tournament win but said he's had bigger scores online. Zawadzki said he'd swung between mid-stakes and high-stakes tournaments online with an average buy-in of $200 as well as playing cash games online.

€1,650 Mystery Final Table Results

Action of the Day

The day started with 99 players remaining with them all being in the money and bounties being activated. Players dropped fast and Yassine El Ouahdani collected five bounties before the first break. He tried his luck at the break and secured the €75,000 bounty early in the day.

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However, the €100,000 eluded the players and was still up for grabs by the time of the final table. Notables who made deep runs included Jason Wheeler (27th- €3,480) and Julio Ribeiro (23rd- €4,010), who was eliminated in brutal fashion as Ezequiel Waigel rivered a set of sevens to crack Ribeiro's pocket aces.

Gianluca Bernardini led at the start of the final table, with Mathias Duarte (9th-€10,840) the first elimination after slow-playing pocket queens against Zawadzki who turned a straight. Next out was Lessa Calheiros Quintella (8th-€14,090) who started the final table second in chips but was second eliminated when his ace-queen couldn't hold against Bernardini's queen-ten.

Bernardini then sent Emrah Yildiz to the rail in seventh place for €18,310, and Christophe Devaux (6th- €23,810) soon followed.

Darren Rabinowitz (5th- €30,560) had been hoarding bounties all day as he saved up six before his ace-six lost to Bernardini's nine-five. Rabinowitz claimed his six bounties but was disappointed to not get his hands on the €100,000 grand prize.

Italian Bernardini (4th- €40,240) was next out in fourth, before play stopped as players drew for bounties but the €100,000 still remained. There were long talks of a deal where the remaining players who decided to ICM chop the regular prize pool as well as agreeing a gentleman's agreement to split the remaining €102,000 mystery bounty prize pool. The final three were left to play for the remaining €12,680 as well as the trophy.

Three-handed play lasted a while before Yordi Bakker (3rd- €63,764) called off Zawadzki's shove from the small blind with king-seven. He was up against Zawadzki's pocket fours and failed to hit to be eliminated in third.

Bakker's elimination set up a heads-up battle between Zawadzki and Peters. The pair battled on until Zawadzki pushed all in from the small blind and Peters called in the big. Zawadzki's ace-four held against Peters' king-ten to claim the title and his biggest live cash to date.

Blaise Bourgeois is a full-time digital nomad living and playing poker in Latin America. He's part of the PokerNews live reporting team for the 2022 World Series of Poker.

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