This year , EPT season 11 returned to the elegant seaside resort of Deauville in Normandy to join forces with the France Poker Series for a 11-day feast of poker from January 28-February 7, 2015.
Day 1a saw Nathan Gozlan top the leaderboard with 148,500 heading a field of 199. With the board showing 392 entrants, it created a total pool of 591 entrants. Gozlan returned second in chips, giving France the top two spots. The Deauville leg of the EPT continued on Day 1b with a total of 390 entrants. After eight levels of play it was Guillaume Darcourt from France who bested the remaining 227 players with 167,800 chips.
Day 1a, 1b and Day 2 have reduced the field of 592 entrants of the €5,300 EPT Deauville Main Event to 138 hopefuls.Though all the players are looking forward to win the €543,700 first-place payout and engrave their own name into the history books of the European Poker Tour, but still 87 of them will be at least take away €8,810 cash prize. French players are dominating the field of the Main Event with 242 French players out of the 592 who have registered for the tournament.
Leading the field is Ireland’s Alex Tikhoniouk 312,600 chips in his maiden participation of an EPT Main Event. Next to him is former EPT champion and EPT 11 London runner-up Kevin MacPhee (308,300) whereas Robert Schulz completes the podium with 296,900 in chips.
It was after eight hours of play on the third day of the €2k High Roller that Vladimir Troyanovskiy locked the title in a tough heads-up battle against Rui Ferreira. Troyanovskiy lead the final table almost the entire evening that had started at 9:30 p.m. and emerged as the winner in virtually the last hand of play.
After whittling down his foe Troyanovskiy spiked on the flop with K♠9♣ against Ferreira’s A♣7♠ after the last five hands had been declared. The board came 9♠2♦J♠4♠Q♥ to give Troyanovskiy the title and impressive cash prize of €141,000, and Ferreira received €97,000 as runner-up.
EPT10 Prague runner-up George “GeoManousos” Sotiropoulos won €1k NL Turbo for €23,960. Ranked 2nd on the Greek all-time money list, Sotiropoulos defeated Russia’s Artem Litvinov heads-up to take down the event. The last hand of the tournament saw the Greek player spike with K♠9♦ against Litvinov’s A♥J♥ on a 2♠4♦Q♦9♥6♦board.
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