Eight Players Remain in the Hunt to Become the EPT's First Double Male Champion
The hunt for the first double European Poker Tour champion was a story that lasted almost ten seasons and nearly 100 stops. While other major tours around the globe celebrated double, triple and even quadruple champions, the EPT celebrated only new champions at every stop.
The EPT grew into the biggest and richest poker tour in the world and it seemed everyone wanted in. Because of that, it became a lot harder to get out with one trophy, let alone two. Vicky Coren finally got the monkey off the tour’s back by taking down EPT Sanremo in Season 10, seven seasons and a 82 events after she won EPT London on her home turf.
Now that Coren’s won two, what do we look for now? The first man to win two titles, is what!
Generally, a Main Event would get to Day 3 and media covering the event would naturally start seeking out all remaining champions. As a tournament reporter, one gets great satisfaction from tracking the eventual winner’s progress from a long way out. To be able to track a player to a second title would take it to another level.
Here in Malta we’ve made Day 3 of the Main Event so it’s time to seek out those double-chasing players. Eight in all made it through to the start of the day and are listed below in a table showing their previous win and stacks at the start of play.
| Name | Title | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jannick Wrang | EPT8 Campione | 237,100 | 79 |
| Dominik Panka | EPT10 PCA | 197,300 | 65 |
| Robin Ylitalo | EPT10 London | 196,000 | 65 |
| Benny Spindler | EPT8 London | 149,400 | 49 |
| Kevin Schulz | EPT11 PCA | 127,000 | 42 |
| David Vamplew | EPT7 London | 76,600 | 25 |
| Sotirios Koutoupas | EPT10 Deauville | 62,700 | 20 |
| Jake Cody | EPT6 Deauville | 58,000 | 19 |
All would love to become the first male double champion, but Kevin Schulz, the 2015 PCA Main Event champ, has another achievement to aim for that the others can’t – to be the first player to win two titles in one season. If he were to achieve that it would be remarkable and we could be waiting another 20 seasons without it being repeated.
If you had checked on his stack with 15 minutes to go before the end of Day 2, you would’ve said he had no chance to win. That's because he was sitting with just 15,000 at the time. Somehow the American managed to spin that up to 127,000 by the end of the day to have real momentum for Day 3.
Two players who won’t be joining Vicky Coren as a double champion in Malta are Jake Cody and Sotirios Koutoupas. The Team PokerStars Pro and last season’s Deauville champion came into the day as the two shortest stacks of our former champions and failed to make it past the first level.
Cody three-bet all in with ace-three but Filippo Lazzaretto, who had opened with big slick, called and flopped a king. The Brit was drawing dead by the turn. Koutoupas made it to the river in a pot with Raphael Blouet but folded, which left him short. He busted in unknown action soon after.
Be sure to stick with the PokerNews coverage throughout this Day 3 as we’ll try to keep a close eye on the six players who can still mark out their own little patch of poker history.