Seat 7: Quentin Pauly, 31, Lyon (28,500,000)
“You guys know where I can find a hotel?” Quentin asked at the end of Day 3. He had already booked his return to Lyon for Sunday, a sign that he never expected to make it this far. Yet his initiation into poker started at a young age, watching his father grind on the .com. “As soon as I turned 18, I got into it. I’ve always enjoyed strategy, and this game quickly gave me what I was looking for.”
Starting with small buy-ins alongside his real estate studies, Quentin gradually trained himself to play ABI 30 today. Curious to try live poker, he moved to the Lyon area to follow his partner. At the time, the region was a desert for poker… until the reopening of the Pasino Grand Partouche La-Tour-de-Salvagny. Over the past two years, the local scene has slowly developed, allowing him to try his hand occasionally with success in some smaller daily tournaments.
Not far from Aix-les-Bains, he even joined the WPO to experience the Winamax atmosphere. “It was amazing,” he says, recalling his deep run in the Main Event, where he finished at a nice frustrating 74th place.
At his second Winamax-branded tournament, he delivered a far stronger performance, reaching the final table of this Grande Finale, not without some struggles. “The first bullet didn’t go well, and on the second one, a lucky 20% river shot allowed me to take off. I finished the day with 371,000 chips before gradually building throughout Day 2.”
A costly three-barrel bluff set him back briefly, but he quickly got back on track to bag the sixth-largest stack of the tournament. He then cruised through Day 3 without major hiccups, finishing near the top of the leaderboard with 28 million chips.
With his slight resemblance to Jérémy Saderne, there’s no doubt he dreams of following in the footsteps of the 2016/2017 Winamax Poker Tour champion.
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