Main Event
Day 5 Started
2012 PokerStars.it EPT Campione
Main Event
Day: 5
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2012 PokerStars.it EPT Campione
Buy-in
€5,000
Prize Pool
€2,764,500
Entries
570
Level
32
Blinds
80,000 / 160,000
Ante
20,000
EPT Campione Day 5: It's Final Table Time!
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Campione main event where in a few hours time the fifth and final day will get underway and will continue until only one man remains seated. Whoever that is will be crowned the inaugural EPT Campione champion and be awarded a cheque for a cool €640,000 along with a custom made Shamballa bracelet worth more than €10,000.
This particular final table has all the hallmarks of being one of the best in the eight season the EPT has been running and we are extremely looking forward to it. Each of the eight final table members have got to this stage on merit and any one of them would be a worthy champion.
Starting the day as chip leader is highly decorated French pro Fabrice Soulier who has more than $3,600,000 in live tournament winnings to his name. Soulier has a World Series of Poker bracelet having won the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event at last year's WSOP and is now a favourite to add an EPT title to his already impressive poker CV.
Standing between Soulier's victory and what will be a career-best score are seven very talented and experienced poker players including Oliver Busquet, Koen De Visscher, Jannick Wrang and Balzs Botond, the latter being a bit of a dark horse in our opinion.
Join us from 14:00 for all the action from the final table, which is also being streamed on PokerStars.TV.
Seat 8: Robin Ylitalo, 25, Gothenberg, Sweden - 1,153,000
Ylitalo has been playing poker around five years, four years as a pro. He mainly plays high-stakes online MTTs with his biggest cash being $100,000 in a $600 buy-in event in January. He’s been playing EPTs for a couple of seasons but his best result before today was 13th at EPT Berlin last season for €28,000. This is his third EPT in Season 8.
Seat 7: Balazs “birs320” Botond, 27, from Budapest, Hungary – PokerStars player 2,080,000
Technology graduate Balazs “birs320” Botond has been playing EPTs since Season 6 and finished 13th at EPT Vienna last season for €26,000. He has made more than $200,000 in live tournament winnings but this sum is totally dwarfed by his online cashes which total more than $1.3m. On PokerStars alone, Botond has won more than $900,000 including a fifth place finish in a $1,500 2011 WCOOP event last year for $30,000. Last month the 27-year-old from Budapest won a $162 buy-in 6-max tourney on PokerStars for $27,100. In online rankings, Botond is currently 128th in the world, and second in Hungary. He took up poker three years ago and turned pro just six months later, eventually ditching his job in a Budapest department store. He is being supported here in Campione by his girlfriend Zsofi.
Seat 6: Fabrice “FabSoul” Soulier, 42, Avignon, France – 3,480,000
Soulier is ranked fourth in France’s all time money list with over $3.6 million in live tournament winnings. He’s been well known in Europe for many years but it was taking down the 2011 WSOP $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship for more than $600,000 that gave him worldwide renown. Other notable cashes include third at the Partouche Main Event in September 2010 for €500,000 (the event won by Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst), third in the Epic Poker League last September and 49th in the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $138,568. He has a total of 18 WSOP cashes as well as deep runs in several EPTs. Last season he finished 11th at EPT Berlin, 48th at EPT San Remo, 19th at EPT Deauville and 64th at EPT Prague – but Campione is his first EPT final table. Soulier was originally a film and TV director but, after winning a couple of large poker tournaments in France, abandoned that career to grind live cash games in the States. He was the top earning French player from 2001-2006 and, according to Cardplayer, one of the top five players in the world in 2006. He has appeared on numerous TV poker shows and was the main character featured in the 2006 PokerStars-sponsored documentary “That's Poker.” Soulier is co-founder of the “Madeinpoker” online poker community.
Seat 5: Jannick Wrang, 31, Copenhagen, Denmark – PokerStars qualifier 2,882,000
Danish grinder Jannick Wrang recently finished ninth on the PokerStars MicroMillions leaderboard so you might be forgiven that he's a low stakes player come good. That could not be further from the truth. Wrang, a regular $25-$50 Pot-Limit Omaha player, had lost $150,000 in a brutal two days of cash games and challenged himself to focus on the micro-stakes series. That ninth place gifted him a $1,050 SCOOP ticket, which he’ll no doubt use to good effect as he pushes through the $1,000,000 mark in online tournament winnings at PokerStars. The Dane has been playing the EPT since Season 3 and this will be his fourth main event cash. A 16th place finish at EPT London (£25,000) was his deepest result before Campione.
Seat 4: Stefano “stefax27” Puccili, 40, Rome, Italy – 1,450,000
Puccilli has been playing poker for eight years with excellent results, especially on the Italian Poker Tour, where he is one of the most popular players at the tables. His IPT performances include winning IPT Sanremo in June 2009 for €120,000, finishing fifth at IPT San Remo in December 2009 for €27,000, 22nd at IPT San Marino in 2010, 29th at IPT Venice 2010 and third place in a €1,100 IPT Campione side event for CHF 21,900. Puccilli was the real star of the first IPT season in 2009/2010 and was voted both IPT Player of the Year and PokerStars Qualifier of the Year during the IPT awards in San Remo. The last year hasn’t been as successful but he has still managed to be the only Italian player on the first EPT Campione final table - out of 242 who started the event! He’s planning to use his winnings to take care of his family, increase his bankroll and maybe buy a good car. When he isn’t playing poker, he says he works “full time as a happy dad”.
Seat 3: Mario Nagel, 29, Gelsenkirchen, Germany – PokerStars player 1,210,000
Campione must bring back pretty good memories for German PokerStars player Mario Nagel because it’s here that he snagged his first ever live cash when he finished 27th at the Italian Poker Tour Campione event last June for $5,126. Just a few months later and he had another cash in Italy – third in one of the EPT San Remo nightly €300 turbo tourneys for €4,500. Online he’s done even better and won a $265 SCOOP event last year for $81,536. Nagel, who is an Industrial Administrator and is also studying economics, first started playing poker after he saw Chris Moneymaker winning the WSOP on TV in 2004. Initially he stuck to playing online tourneys on PokerStars but after his SCOOP victory, he started playing live events as well. EPT Barcelona was his first EPT and this is his first EPT main event cash. Nagel is being supported in Campione by his good friends Ole Schemoin, Tobias Hagedorn and EPT Prague champion Martin Finger.
Seat 2: Koen De Visscher, 26, Wilsele, Belgium – 1,856,000
De Visscher started playing poker on holiday in April 2006 and has been playing regularly ever since. He bubbled the first EPT he ever played – EPT Barcelona in Season 7 - but got his big break at EPT Snowfest just a few months later, finishing third for €147,000. Since then he’s accrued a further €50,000 in EPT cashes including three this season: 33rd at EPT Barcelona for €16,000, 18th at EPT Loutraki for €8,700 and 30th at EPT Deauville for €20,000. Visscher first started playing poker in €5 home games with friends but after a year started playing online. He's now a full time player and has focused on tournaments for the three years. He’s no slouch online either, taking down a PokerStars.com SCOOP $1k NL event last year for $92,417. He lives with his girlfriend in Wilsele near Leuven.
Seat 1: Olivier Busquet, 30, Westchester County, USA – 3,011,000
Widely regarded as one of the best heads-up sit-n-go players in the world, Olivier Busquet has made a highly successful move to live poker and has already earned over $2.5 million. He first started playing poker in home games while working for a Wall Street trading firm. He said: “When I first took up poker, it was with the idea that there was essentially a lot of skill set overlap between what a Wall Street trader and a poker professional were doing. Another friend of mine told me about online poker and I got right into it. Eventually, I had built up to a few thousand dollars and jumped into $5-$10. In the span of a month, I had earned about $100,000 and moved into the $25-$50 games.”
On one site, Busquet became the first ever player to win seven-figures playing heads-up SNGs and in 2009 he started playing live. He cashed several times at that summer’s World Series but it was his victory at WPT Borgata in September that put him on the map when he beat a 1,108-strong field for $925,514. A few months later, Busquet snagged the second biggest cash of his career - €597,000 after finishing second to Tobias Reinkemeier at the EPT6 Grand Final High Roller in Monaco. Since then he has cashed at the PCA, EPT Deauville and NAPT Mohegan Sun as well as finishing fourth in the EPT London High Roller event last October for £171,200 and 34th at EPT Madrid two weeks ago.