Friday, 29th March 2024 14:57
Home / Uncategorized / EPT Barcelona: The final eight

EPTOur final table is set at EPT Barcelona, with eight players in sight of the €850,000 first prize. Play is scheduled to begin today at 2pm and we will play to a winner.

You can find chip counts updated throughout the day on the chip count page. And you can find a list of all the prizewinners from this event on the prizewinners page.

Without further ado, here are our final table players:

Seat 1: Georgios Kapalas, 25, Athens, Greece
Chips:
826,000

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Only a few years since taking up the game, Kapalas is now considered one of the best poker players in Greece. He is also the top Greek “Magic: The Gathering” player with great success in international tournaments. He started playing poker in 2006 and qualified online for a tournament in Austria at the end of that year, providing the springboard for his career. Known as “gkap13” online, Kapalas has earned more than $200,000 from poker, including a final table at the World Series this summer, where he won $97,000. He also recently won $35,000 online – his biggest online cash. He has made two final tables in EPT side events – the €2,000 events in Barcelona and Prague – but this is his best EPT performance to date.

Seat 2: Mihai Manole, 27, Bucharest, Romania
Chips:
410,000

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Mihai is a professional poker player and has been playing for the past six years. He lives in Bucharest and graduated in computer science last year. He plays both online and live – cash and tournaments – and has had a string of good results including second place at the Caribbean Poker Classic in 2007 for $145,500. He also made the final table of the WSOP $2,000 event in 2008 for $155,000.

Seat 3: Santiago Terrazas, 40, Madrid, Spain
PokerStars sponsored player
Chips:
546,000

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Terrazas runs a construction company in Madrid but has been playing poker for the past ten years. He began with the Spanish card game Mus and was a national champion before taking up Texas hold ’em. He has had considerable successes in live events including 338th place in the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2007 for $39,000. He is a familiar figure in the Spanish poker community where he is usually known just as “Terrazas”.

Seat 4: Asa Smith, 22, Ledbury, UK
Chips:
1,380,000

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Smith is one of the UK’s brightest young talents and is currently on a tournament heater having strung together four consecutive cashes on the European Poker Tour. This, however, is the deepest that he has gone. A big score will add to the $92,259 that Smith has already scooped in EPT tournaments since he cashed for $24,000 at the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Smith usually plays mid- to high-stakes cash games online and says that he plays full time “as long as you can count playing 15-20 hours a week as a job”. His biggest EPT cash to date was €25,000 at the Grand Final in Monte Carlo last season.

Seat 5: Carter Phillips, 20, Charlotte, North Carolina
PokerStars qualifier
Chips:
4,421,000

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Phillips has appeared regularly on the EPT since going deep in both San Remo and Monte Carlo last year, busting within sight of the bubble. Barcelona will be his biggest live cash, topping the €29,500 won last week when he chopped €1,000 side event here. He also narrowly missed a Latin American Poker Tour event final table, busting in tenth place in Vina Del Mar last January. Those results, and his performance this week, demonstrate a development from online player — where his username is “bdybldngpkr” — to live tournaments. In the ten months spent playing full time, Phillips has competed among the best in the game. “Online you play against the same people and get a feel for how they play,” he said. “Ninety per cent of them might play full time. In EPTs there’s a mix of pros and recreational players. But I approach it the same way.”

Seat 6: Matt “Lapozie” Lapossie, 23, London, Ontario
PokerStars qualifier
Chips:
2,938,000

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A professional player from Canada, Matt Lapossie has been a dominant force throughout this tournament at Casino Barcelona. After qualifying in an $800 satellite on PokerStars he steadily built a stack through day one and exploded on day two, ending as chip leader. Supported throughout by his girlfriend Tamara, Lapossie has been a menace at the tables, impressing all with some massively accomplished and fiercely aggressive play. This is his second EPT event and he spent much of day four on the featured table, where he’ll return for the final third in chips.

Seat 7: Toni Ojala, 34, Turku, Finland
Chips:
754,000 chips

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Ojala has been playing poker for four years and has already had several notable successes in live events. He won the Finnish Championship last year for €136,800 and cashed three times at this summer’s WSOP including 11th in the £1,000 event that attracted more than 6,000 runners. His tournament winnings to date total nearly $ 340,000. He has already cashed at three EPT main events but this is his first final table.

Seat 8: Marc Goodwin, 49, Birmingham, UK
Chips:
3,100,000

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Goodwin is one of the best-known players in the UK with a poker career going back nearly two decades. His live tournament earnings amount to more than $1.4m. A former double glazing window salesman, Goodwin turned pro after finishing third in the Monte Carlo Millions in 2005 for $325,000. He has had numerous successes since then and in 2008 won the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Manchester tournament for £90,420. He has played numerous EPTs and has cashed three times – in Baden, Dublin and London. However making the final table in Barcelona is his best EPT result to date. Goodwin is in the top 25 of the all-time money list for English poker players.

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